Sanity in Grey
by dragonmage5
Summary: Harry Potter crossover. Chapter 10 has a violence warning, Willow is offered a teaching job at hogwarts and finds out lots of fun facts about her family. she realises there is fun to be had in the grey areas between good and evil.
1. Truth, Lies and Changes

Sanity in Grey

These characters are not mine, they belong to a bunch of other people who are not me in any shape or form

In this fic when Xander stopped Willow ending the world, Willow stayed in Sunnydale. Her friends deserted her, Buffy was a bitch and banned Willow from any and all use of magic. Harry and co are going into their fifth year, all things in the book stand but if I forget anything please tell me, I haven't read them in a while. 

I have no clue what rating this will be or even what the pairings are going to be, I'm just kinda going with the flow.

Please review because I have a terrible habit of leaving things unfinished so I need all the encouragement I can get. Thanx (premature I know but I'm pleading with you)

Part 1

She looked back on her life and couldn't believe how much she had changed. About 9 months ago she had been this mousy character, the sidekick with just enough power and brains to make her useful. Sure she had been fairly strong she had fought demons and other big evil things but she had never really been her own person, a leader. Then she had brought Buffy back from the dead. The pain had been unbelievable but the pleasure of the power, it was such a trip. 

She realised she had gone off the rails, her addiction to magic had definitely not been a good thing, and she let that creep Rack touch her. Oh well he's dead now, it doesn't matter anymore. That whole lets destroy the world thing had been a bad idea too, but she was completely over that now.

When she looked at herself now she was unrecognisable. On the outside, she had an entirely new wardrobe which actually suited her. She smiled to herself knowing she looked damn good with her new clothes and hair. The hair was not entirely her idea, after she had come down from her dark magic high she was left with streaks of black, which just refused to go away. Not that she minded, in fact she really quite liked them.

She was kind of a bad girl now, not in a homicidal 'I want to tear your skin off' way, she just did little things to keep herself sane not to mention have some fun. Yeah, that little area of grey between light and dark was definitely what kept her sanity in tact. In the last month she had hacked into two or three multinational companies and transferred funds into her own untraceable offshore account. She was now a multi-millionaire many times over, which came in very useful for things like buying the flat she now lived in.

Not only that but she had picked up a few bad habits from her vampire self and she had a few puppies, both male and female, at her disposal. Of course, her puppies were fully consensual and devoted to her. She had discovered that she had a talent for manipulation and she could make people believe whatever she wanted them to. It was great fun for her, and her puppies weren't complaining either.

When her friends had practically abandoned her, she had been forced into the wide world, and she had never been so grateful for anything in her entire life. She loved her new life and it just seemed to get more interesting by the minute.

For instance about an hour ago, she had been woken from an extremely nice dream by a bloody great owl tapping on the glass of her window. She had let it in, now feeling completely awake and bewildered, it had stood waiting for a moment before indicating the piece of paper attached to its leg with its beak. 

She reached out and untied the message, the owl waited for her to finish reading the letter before impatiently saying in a voice filled with irritation, 'are you going to feed me or not, it's a long journey across that stupid ocean you know.' 

Willow had nearly keeled over in shock at hearing the owl speak and she absently reached over to pick up a packet of biscuits she had in her room and handed a few to the owl.

'Can all owls talk?' she asked wondering how it was she had never noticed this particular trait before.

'You understand me?' it was now the owls turn to be shocked. 'Most humans can only hear me hooting, they don't hear what I'm saying. This is most unusual.' The owl regarded her calmly, clearly thinking.

'Would you like to stay for a while, we might be able to sort this out between us, and maybe you could tell me something about this Hogwarts place?' Willow didn't know which to be more stunned by, the talking owl or the invitation to join the teaching staff in this school of witchcraft.

'Well I could stay for a little time I suppose, but you wouldn't happen to have any meat around that I could have, I really am hungry and I'm afraid biscuits just don't help too much.'

She had taken bacon from the kitchen and once the owl, (Geoff was his name) had eaten it they had chatted for about half an hour until he insisted he had to leave.

Willow was still puzzling over the information she had been given, she knew that she was a capable teacher, (her time as a teacher in high school had shown her that), She just wasn't sure if this experience would be worth her while. Then again they had offered to teach her in the months before the beginning of school and at various points during the school year and she would never turn down a chance to find out more about her powers and her limits.

She had agreed anyway, so this line of thought was a pointless waste of time; she would be leaving for England tomorrow night.

Goodbye old life, hello magical goodness.

'What the hell?' Willow stood completely still in the doorway of the Magic Box, staring at its current occupants. She had come over on the afternoon before her flight to say a final farewell to her old life and hopefully never see these people ever again. However her plans had just flown out of the window, in front of her, her parents Sheila and Ira Rosenburg where deep in conversation with Giles and the Scoobies ~ sounds like a bad 80's rock band. ~

All heads turned upon hearing her entrance.

'Does she know?' Giles directed the question at her parents so softly she almost missed them.

Her mothers frantic head shaking confirmed that whatever it was, she currently didn't know it and definitely wanted to know it.

'What are you doing her Wills, you are not allowed near magic stuff, get out.' A very red-faced Buffy came forward to bodily remove her from the shop. ~ Trust the blonde bitch to start on me ~

'I came to say goodbye,' she stuttered out her response nearly laughing at how pathetic she sounded, 'I'm leaving tonight.'

'Willow.' Her dad broke in before the bimbo slayer could say anything else, ~ lucky coz I don't know how long I could have lasted before I taught her a lesson and that would totally ruin my good girl image ~ 

'We have to tell you some things about your past. Will you come and sit with us?'

The entire group vacated the room leaving only Willow, her parents and Buffy who was listening covertly from the corner.

Willow sat on the indicated chair and waited silently.

'We…um…we thought you should know, I mean its kind of important with things the way they are…and we know that you…well we…we're not your parents Willow, your adopted.' 


	2. Family

Sanity in Grey

These characters are not mine, they belong to a bunch of other people who are not me in any shape or form

In this fic when Xander stopped Willow ending the world, Willow stayed in Sunnydale. Her friends deserted her, Buffy was a bitch and banned Willow from any and all use of magic. Harry and co are going into their fifth year, all things in the book stand but if I forget anything please tell me, I haven't read them in a while. 

I have no clue what rating this will be or even what the pairings are going to be, I'm just kinda going with the flow.

Is it A Hellmouth or THE Hellmouth coz I'm not sure. Anyway in this fic it THE one and only.

Please review because I have a terrible habit of leaving things unfinished so I need all the encouragement I can get. Thanx (premature I know but I'm pleading with you)

Part 2

'I'm adopted?' Willow spoke the words slowly, staring at her parents in disbelief, only they weren't her parents, she was someone else's child. This was just a little confusing.

Her mother answered the question, looking at her sadly, 'we really should start at the beginning. There are things we have hidden from you all your life, we hoped to spare you the pain of a life with magic but we felt it when you tried to end the world, we felt your power and we also know Dumbledore invited you to Hogwarts. Anyway, I'm starting in the middle again so…well, Ira and I have magic too, we graduated from Hogwarts a few years before we married and moved here. We were both wizarding doctors so we saw all the horrors of Voldemorts power and when things got too bad, we left. A few years later a young girl about 16 turned up on our doorstep begging for help, she was pregnant and almost full term and she didn't want to have her child where Voldemort could reach her, so she came to us.'

'Who is this Voldemort guy?' Even though Willow was dying to here about her parents she wanted to be sure she understood the whole story.

Her father answered her,' Voldemort was…is a powerful and evil wizard. He and his followers tried to take over the magic world, killing everyone who stood against them and killing muggles just for sport.' He looked up and saw the puzzled look on her face adding, 'a muggle is a non-magical person.'

Her mother picked up the story again, 'the woman, your mother was called Lilly Evans, and…she had been raped by Lord Voldemort, you are his child and although he didn't know of your existence then, I have no doubt that he felt your magic and felt your relationship to himself. He will come for you, I cannot begin to guess why he has not already.'

'My mother? What happened to her?' Willow didn't want to hear about her father, the only time she would meet him would be when she killed him for what he did to her mother.

'About 6 years later Lily married a man called James, and became Lily Potter they had a son, Harry, but Voldemort saw them as a threat and he killed them. He tried to kill Harry at the same time but his curse backfired on him and he disappeared for years. He apparently came back just a few weeks ago at the beginning of Summer and will no doubt try to finish what he started last time.' Sheila finished, looking at Willow with sadness and pity. 'We are sorry Willow, we know we were never really good parents to you but we thought you should know the full story before you left. Can you forgive us?'

'I have a brother?'

'Yes, I think he lives in the muggle world now but he goes to Hogwarts.'

Willow sat still for a moment, she couldn't believe this.

Her mother began to talk again, pushing an envelope across the table, 'your mother left this letter for you, she wanted you to read it some day.'

Willow took the letter, stood and walked to the door turning at the last instant, 'I forgive you and I understand why you did it. Goodbye.' She went out of the shop without looking back and walked for a few minutes before sitting on a bench in the park and taking out the letter. 

She opened it and read the contents finding documents that where proof of her parentage and personal letters from her mother that had her in tears. Eventually she got up, her tears were still falling but she was completely resolved, she went to prepare to leave Sunnyhell forever.

Her flight had landed in London two hours ago and she was now in her penthouse hotel room connecting her laptop to the Internet. She had spent the flight deciding what to do when she arrived and she was now methodically putting her plan into action.

She began by transferring what amounted to 10 million British pounds from her offshore account into a British bank where she could access it easily.

When that was done she began her search, somewhere out there she had a brother and she was going to find him and if he wanted to go, he would be coming with her. She knew that it was extremely likely that he was happy and would want to stay where he was in which case she would leave him there and visit like a million times a week. If not there would be no way that she would leave without him.

They had told her he lived in the normal world so there would be a record of him somewhere and she would find him.

It took over three hours to narrow down the number of Harry Potters to one but eventually she was sure she had the right one. She didn't have to meet the Hogwarts representative until Saturday and this was Wednesday so she changed into her best take-me-seriously clothes, grabbed her laptop in its bag and practically bounce out of the hotel to find her elusive brother. 

Three train rides and a cab journey later and she was standing at the door that was her destination. She rang the doorbell and waited, trying to contain her butterflies and not fidget with her hair.

'Harry!' the high pitched screech travelled through the wood of the door, 'Get up to your room I don't want anyone to see you. You scruffy waste of space.'

Willow contained her anger thinking there might be a good reason for the way this woman was treating her brother.

A sharp-faced grumpy-looking woman opened the door with an equally sharp 'Hello?'

'Hi, my name is Willow Rosenburg, I wondered if I could possibly speak to Harry Potter.' she was being as polite as possible to this woman who was simply standing scowling at her.

'Why do you want to talk to him?' the woman looked positively hostile now. 'You're one of those freaks aren't you, just like him, from that school of his. Well you can just leave I don't want you here, you should have been drowned at birth along with that brat Harry.' The woman attempted to slam the door in Willows face only to find it fixed in place and a very angry, black-eyed Willow facing her.

'I suggest you ask Harry to come down to see me, you will not insult either Harry or myself ever again and you will go somewhere that is not here until I need you. Are we clear?' Willow was barely containing the dark magic that was flowing through her body looking for a way out. One more word from this disgusting woman and she was going to lose it completely.

Luckily the woman simply nodded and fled towards the back of the house calling for Harry to come down on her way.

Willow used the minute before Harry appeared to calm down, her eyes changed back to their normal bright green and her power was no longer visible to anyone with a magical sense in their body.

Harry was puzzled. He was sitting in his room listening to what was going on at the front door. There was a woman there who wanted to talk to him and apparently, she was a witch. He didn't know anyone called Willow so was this just some witch journalist, oh God it wasn't another Rita Skeeter he didn't think he could handle that again. Besides, hadn't Dumbledore said no one in the wizarding world outside a selected few teachers and his friends knew where he lived?

Well his aunt had called him down so he could go and find out what this was all about.

When he reached the door he found a beautiful young woman with deep red hair, startling green eyes and a rather annoyed look on her face, but that was to be expected since she had been dealing with Aunt Petunia.

'Hello?' he watched as she looked at him, her face brightening and losing all trace of annoyance, in fact she looked extremely happy to see him.

'You're Harry?' at his nod she continued, 'Hi, my name is Willow. I'm sorry but I think I scared you aunt but she is definitely one of the most horrible people I have ever met in my life and trust me that's saying something. Why on earth do you stay here with her, I mean there must be somewhere else you can go and that's why I'm here. Oh, I wanted to ask, are you happy here not that I can see how you could be but well, I'm babbling a bit, I do that when I'm nervous. Anyway I would like to ask if you want to spend the day with me cause you wouldn't want to live with a complete stranger even if I am your sister and then if you want to leave this hell hole you can stay with me.' She fidgeted nervously but Harry didn't notice.

'My sister?' it was all he could think of to say, he had a sister, this woman was his sister, he didn't have to stay here anymore.

'Yeah, I probably should explain that, huh? Well a few days ago my parents told me that they weren't actually my parents and that my mum was your mum and that I have a half brother, you. Then this school, Hogwarts got in contact with me and offered me a job and so I came here. I wanted to see if you were happy, I don't know if you really want to come and stay with me and you really don't have to decide now its all up to you.'

'I will do anything to get away from here, and I would really like to stay with you but won't you have to get custody and stuff.' Willow looked like she was going to die of joy.

'It really that bad here? Do you want me to scare your Aunt some more, we could set some traps in the house, just to keep her on her toes. Oh and I can sort all the paper work and stuff.'

'No, its fine really, I just want to get out of here.' He didn't know his sister yet but he was sure he was going to like her. She definitely had her quirks, the babbling being one of them but she seemed like she could be a lot of fun to be with and hadn't she said that Dumbledore had offered her a job which meant she must be ok. He could really begin to like her.

At that moment his Uncle Vernon pulled into the driveway with Dudley stuffing his face in the passenger seat. He got out and stormed up to where they stood at the door, his face already set in a scowl.

'Who the hell are you and where is my wife?' Vernon shouted out the question squaring up to Willow in an obvious attempt to intimidate her. It didn't work.

Willow watched this rather fat man and his extremely fat son make their way towards her and fought to hold in her laughter as he tried to scare her.

She quickly regained her composure saying in a patient, condescending voice, 'I am your niece Mr Dursley, I am the daughter of Lily Potter and I am here to take custody of Harry Potter. I have documentation to prove who I am and I am willing to pay a substantial amount of money to ensure that you will never bother us again. As for your wife, I believe she is in your house somewhere, she did not bother to find out who I was before insulting me so I will not deal with her.'

The mans eyes lit up with greed at the prospect of a 'substantial amount of money' not to mention the idea of getting rid of Harry. 'Won't you come in and we can discus this in more comfort.'

The words practically oozed of his tongue, Goddess this man was as slimy as they come. Willow forced herself to remain polite however and followed him into the house, walking beside Harry into the sitting room.

Within the space of half an hour Harry had his bags packed and was leaving the Dursleys behind forever. Willow had produced documents ready for the Dursleys to sign saying that they would never again contact either of them if Willow paid them ten thousand pounds and they had happily signed them as soon as they saw Willow write out a cheque. There was no real need for lawyers since once the two lived in the wizarding world they would not be found anyway by any muggle means. The documents were possibly not completely legally binding but they served the purpose of keeping the Dursleys away from them since they were not smart enough to know that and the money was really nothing to Willow anyway.

Willow was in a happy little world of her own as she sat in the taxi next to Harry on their way to the station. She had been worried for a minute when Dursley had read out the name of her father, as soon as Harry heard the name Voldemort he had started and paled a little but he didn't seem to hold it against her, for which she was thankful.

Harry had been startled when he heard who Willows dad was. He couldn't believe his mum had been with that monster, but he realised that it wasn't Willows fault that her father was evil, so he had waited until they were in the taxi to ask her about it.

'Will you explain about your father?'

Willow looked at him, clearly wondering what to tell him, 'He raped Lily, your, our mother. I have never met him of spoken with him but be sure that if and when I do, I will destroy him for what he did to her and to everyone else.' 

She spoke with quiet confidence and surprisingly he found himself believing she could and would do it.

He could accept her as his sister, it was easy really, she was so friendly and seemed to be desperate to get to know him and make up for lost time.

'So what job are you going to be doing at Hogwarts?' he really was curious about this and he really couldn't think of any job, unless Dumbledore was finally replacing Trelawney with a real seer. 

'I'm the new Defence Against the Dark Arts teacher, it should be fun except that I'm not sure if you get the same kind of evil things that we got back home, I'm going to have to do some research.'

'How can you be the DADA teacher, I mean you're so young and not to scare you but the past teachers haven't lasted more than a year.' She couldn't possibly be serious, there was no way she could have any experience, she was so young and she had said herself that she didn't know what kind of dark things they had to study. It wasn't that he didn't want her to teach he just couldn't believe the headmaster would hire someone so…well, young and innocent.

The cab stopped and they got out grabbing Harry's bags and making their way into the station. Willow waited until they were settled to wait for their train before answering. 'I wish I was as inexperienced as I must look, but where I lived until now its impossible to avoid the things that go bump in the night. Have you ever heard of the Hellmouth, well that is what my town is, vampires, demons, you name it we have it and have most likely killed it at some point or other. Some of my friends have died or changed completely, including myself, it was no picnic living there.'

She looked so sad Harry was relieved when the train pulled up and her thought focused on getting on without losing anything. They got on the train and sat down all the time talking about unimportant things. They continued chatting about less serious things, about Hogwarts and Harry's life in general for most of the journey. It was only when they arrived in London that Harry thought of something to really cheer her up.

'Why don't we dump my stuff and go to Diagon Alley shopping, I can show you all the sights and we can get you robes and set up an account for you in Gringotts.' The moment he saw her face he was glad he had thought of it, in fact it wasn't so much her face as her bouncing that gave away her approval of the idea.

She was so happy it was unbelievable, Harry was great and she was so grateful to have him with her although the more she heard about his life, the more she wished she had inflicted immense pain on the Dursleys.

She laughed when she caught sight of his open-jawed expression when they entered her penthouse suite. There was no way she was letting him explore and play with all the gadgets though because he had promised her shopping and she was not a patient woman.

They were in and out of the hotel suite in under two minutes and then they walking towards the Leaky Caldron and Diagon Alley, or at least Harry was walking, what Willow was doing was closer to skipping. He really brought out the hidden child in her, or maybe it was just the change in environment.


	3. Friends, Money and a little bit of Darkn...

None of its mine, blah blah, you get the point.

Thank you, to all my reviewers, I wasn't planning on finishing this until next week but you got me to stop doing what I was meant to be doing and finish this.

In this fic when Xander stopped Willow ending the world, Willow stayed in Sunnydale. Her friends deserted her, Buffy was a bitch and banned Willow from any and all use of magic. Harry and co are going into their fifth year, all things in the book stand but if I forget anything please tell me, I haven't read them in a while. 

I have no clue what rating this will be or even what the pairings are going to be, I'm just kinda going with the flow.

Pretty, pretty pleez review, it makes my day J 

Part 3

'Its easy just touch the wall with your wand.'

'My what?'

'Your wand, take it out and tap the wall.'

'I don't have a wand.'

'What do you mean you don't have a wand, I thought you could do magic?'

'Look here Mister, don't take that tone of voice with me its not my fault I haven't got a clue what you're on about.' She took a breath before going on in a slightly calmer tone, 'besides, I was really nice. I let you rush through that interesting little pub didn't I, although why you didn't want to talk to any of those strange people I don't know, I know I wanted to but I still let you drag me away…and, I will have you know I'm a pretty powerful witch, I just don't have a wand thingy. Capeesh.' If the look Harry gave her (once he got over feeling sheepish) was any indication, it was kind of unusual not to have a wand in this world.

'So how do you do magic then?' he asked when he finally got over his shock enough to speak.

She considered this for a moment, it was a complex question, 'well most of the time I direct it through my hand but sometimes I just do it with my mind I suppose. I don't really know I just do it. I used spells a lot when I first started and crystals and things too but I don't usually need them now unless its something really subtle and then I use them because its easier to regulate the amount of power I use that way.' She stopped looking at his baffled but thoughtful expression. 'How do you do magic?' 

'We use our wands and speak the name of the spells for most things but for this all it takes is for the wand to direct a little magic at the wall. I can't do it because I'm not allowed to use magic over the holidays and I'm not too sure if this counts or not but I've been in enough trouble this year as it is.' She understood the look of pain that crossed his features, he had told her on the train about Cedric and the whole tournament fiasco. She needed to get past this wall and get him distracted.

She thought over what he had said and reached out her hand to lightly brush the wall and at the same time sending the smallest bit of magic through her fingertips. At her touch, the bricks formed themselves into a doorway and revealed the strangest, most fascinating place she had ever seen. Diagon Alley.

'So where to first?' Willow asked before supplying the answer herself. 'I almost forgot, we need to go to the bank, lead on Macduff.' 

He didn't ask, he just turned and led the way laughing as he went, he had already learning that the histories behind her sayings could be long and confusing. Not only that but he was carrying half of the money she was going to put into Gringotts and it was damn heavy even if it was just paper. He grinned, he had never thought he would be so desperate to get rid of 3 million pounds cash. Oh well a lot of strange things were happening to him today.

However, no matter how much he tried to hurry her, Willow insisted on stopping every few seconds to look at things, it was frustrating and painful.

Finally his frustration got the better of him, 'look, if we go to Gringotts first you will actually have enough money to by something, so can we hurry before my arm drops off, this case is heavy,'

A guilty look appeared on her face, 'oops sorry I forgot you still had that I minimised mine and made it feather light when we were in that Leaky Bucket place, sorry.' 

He watched as she waved her hand a little and the case shrunk and became weightless in his hand. He merely sighed and pocketed the item, he had only known her half a day and he was already used to her little fits of 'flakehood' as she called them.

She felt bad for totally forgetting he was carrying the case, but no harm done, he didn't seem mad or anything. She walked beside him in companionable silence, it was so strange, it was as though they had know each other forever, they just felt like a normal family, or what she thought a normal family would feel like.

She saw Harry's face light up a little and looked in the direction he was staring, there was a group of people standing looking in a shop window. She knew instantly they were the Weasley family by their red hair and she was fairly sure the girl with them was Hermione. Harry loved the whole bunch of them a whole lot.

'Harry do you want to go and talk to them while I go to the bank, just give me the case and I'll find you later ok.' He took the case out of his pocket smiling but stopped half way.

'How will you find me though, this place is pretty busy today especially for the beginning of the holidays.'

'I can find you anywhere. I felt it the minute we met, we sort of connected, I'm fairly sure you could find me anywhere too if you tried hard enough. Anyway, it's complicated, just go and talk to your friends now.' 

He handed her the case and walked away waving happily. It was then that Willow realised that she didn't know the way to the bank, but she reasoned he had been leading her up the street so she would just continue on, there was no point in breaking up the hugging group.

She wandered up the street for a few minutes before seeing her destination ahead of her.

She stepped inside Gringotts not feeling at all intimidated by the size or grim atmosphere of the place, in fact she thought the goblins were quite cute in a strange way. She walked up to a goblin sitting at a desk in front of her.

'Are you the right person to ask about opening an account?' she wasn't too sure if calling him a person was politically correct but these guys looked like they were all about business so she doubted they would take offence.

'Yes, what name would you like it under?' the goblin looked at her over the top of its glasses waiting for an answer.

'Rosenburg, Willow Rosenburg.' She paused for a second before adding, 'I would also like it to be possible for Harry Potter to access the account and withdraw money.' the goblin noted it down and took a key out from beneath his desk and passed it to her. 

'Account number 5576, would you like to make a deposit?' the goblin spoke in a very efficient if not friendly way, all business just as she had expected.

' Can I change this muggle money for wizard money and have 5 million placed in the account please?' As she spoke she withdrew the two cases from her pocket returned them to their normal size and placed them on the desk in front of the goblin.

He opened them, his eyes lighting up at the sight of the money. '6 million muggle pounds,' for a moments she thought she heard a tinge of glee in his voice but then he was all business once again. 'We can exchange that at a 5% commission and have it placed in your vault.'

'1% commission not a penny more,' countered Willow.

This went on until they agreed on 2%, the goblin looked a little less happy but still, he had made 120 thousand pounds out of the deal so he was not even close to being depressed.

Willow left the bank with the other million of her money changed into galleons and minimised in her pocket.

She reached out through her connection with Harry and began walking in his direction.

When he appeared beside his friends there was a lot of happy hugging as usual, Harry was on cloud 9. He had a new sister and he was with his friends, he was pretty sure life didn't get any better than this.

'We were so worried about you,' Hermione began talking rather quickly as though someone had wound her up just a little too much, 'I mean we know Dumbledore has a whole lot of wards around the house but when we saw the Daily Prophet this morning…' she trailed off, a thoughtful look coming over her face, 'Harry, what exactly are you doing here anyway, are you here with Hagrid?'

For some strange reason he really didn't feel like explaining about Willow at the moment so he avoided the question. 'What on earth was in the paper that got you so worked up. Trelawney hasn't started a column predicting my death has she?' it was meant to be a joke but it went down like a ton of bricks.

'You mean you haven't seen it yet, You Know Who has a daughter, apparently she is really powerful and evil, apparently she lived in America and no one knew about her but she did this really, big dark magic spell and everyone found out. Apparently she is here, now, in England but no one knows what she looks like or anything about her really.' He couldn't believe Willow would do dark magic, there must have been good reason even if she did, something to do with that Hellmouth thing she had mentioned maybe. He would ask her about it next time he was alone with her.

'Have you seen the newest version of the Firebolt, you have got to see it, its amazing.' Ron cut across Harry's thoughts pointing at the window where the Firebolt-Destroyer was proudly displayed. Apparently, now that he knew Harry was safe Ron was content to return to his first love, Quidditch. 

Fred Weasley joined in their enthusiasm, 'you have to see all its features, it's…'

'Well look what we have here,' they turned to find Draco Malfoy and his father pointing identical smirks their way. It was unclear who had originally spoken but Draco continued, 'Its Potter, the Mudblood and the whole brood of Weasels. Shouldn't you be hiding Potter what with the Dark Lords daughter about and all, oh well, you never did know when to be scared.'

As Draco finished his father took over, 'you should all look very hard at what side you choose in the war you know, not that the Dark Lord would ever want a useless bunch of Weasels, but you my dear, even though you are a Mudblood your intelligence is very attractive.' 

He reached out his hand and placed it on the side of Hermione's cheek, Harry was just reaching for his wand when a voice he knew came from behind him. 'If you don't remove that hand I will remove it for you.'

All attention shifted to a very angry Willow who was now standing directly in front of Lucius Malfoy.

'You little girl? What will you do? You don't even have your wand out. You really should stay out of this, don't you know who I am?' His hand moved to the top of Hermione's arm, obviously gripping quite hard as it was plain to see she was trying not to cry. 

Ron and his family were standing obviously very angry and very curious as to the identity of this young woman.

Willow had come up behind Harry just as this silver haired bully had insulted the Weasel's and reached out for Hermione. She was furious she felt her rage building up within her. She had given the first warning, part of her praying he would listen, another part wanting to dismember him anyway.

'You little girl? What will you do? You don't even have your wand out. You should stay out of this, don't you know who I am?' his words pushed her ever so slightly over the edge, she could still control herself but she was pissed of and ready to do some serious damage.

She registered the growing crowd around them and the looks of confusion from the onlookers.

'Release your grip, now!' she said the words quietly but they were no less threatening.

Hermione gave a squeal as he obviously tightened his grip. Willow almost completely lost it. Her hair and eyes went jet black, Lucius released Hermione and went for his wand. Willow lazily waved her hand in his direction and he flew down the street crashing into a brick wall with enough force that he was almost knocked unconscious. Willow began to slowly follow him when she felt a hand on her arm, she turned ready to hurt the person behind her, only to find Harry looking into her eyes, 'I think he got the point,' was all he said.

She burst out laughing, her hair returned to its normal red streaked with black and her eyes became green again. 'Yeah, I think that was pretty effective. Are you ok?' she moved to Hermione's side.

'I think so.' Came the shaky answer, ' I just need to wash.' 

That got Willow laughing again and she laid her hand on the shoulder where a bruise was already beginning to form. Hermione looked at her in surprise as her hand glowed and all the pain went out of the area.

Willow heard whispered conversations and looked up to find that the crowd of people were still there staring at her and whispering.

'It's rude to stare you know.' She smiled a little as they all suddenly turned and hurried of to discuss her at a safer distance. She looked towards the spot where Lucius had been and found both he and his son gone.

Suddenly two red haired boys appeared in her line of vision. 'Fred and George Weasley, nice to meet you.' They both held out their hands and she shook them introducing herself.

'Willow Rosenburg, nice to meet you too.' Harry popped up at her side then and began to introduce her to the entire group adding in a conversational tone,

' Willow is my sister, I'm going to be staying with her and she'll be teaching DADA at Hogwarts next year.' 

Willow smiled again at the shocked uncomprehending faces of all those around her. She could tell the explanations were going to take a while.

'Why don't we go and have tea or something and we'll explain.' She was truly starving, dark magic always had that effect on her, plus she wanted to walk of some of the energy she had, having not completely comedown from her high yet.

'She would have to ask Harry if he wanted them to know about her father, oh well, this was going to be a long day, and it wasn't going to contain half as much shopping as she wanted it too.


	4. extract twig from ass

Sorry it took so long, I got kind of distracted, please review, I love feed back, its what keeps me writing even when I don't really have time.

Any suggestions are welcome too since I don't really have a plan for this fic, I'm just rolling with it.

Arsinoe: Snapes in there just for you. 

Part 4

'There is no way the two of you can down those in one shot.' Willows laughing voice was directed at the already tipsy Charlie and Bill Weasley. Both men were home for a few weeks and having met her in Diagon Alley after the Lucius thing had insisted on taking her out on Friday night and showing her the wizarding nightlife.

'Willow darling, that sounds suspiciously like a challenge, come on Bill, let's show her exactly what we are capable of.' On that note he grabbed his triple shot of some unbelievably strong alcoholic drink and swallowed it in a single gulp.

Willow was having a great time, she was sitting in a club, with two unbelievable hot men, one of whom seemed very interested in her and she knew Harry was safe and happy at Ron's house. They had both been present at the 'big explanation' in Diagon Alley and they were happy about her relationship with Harry and fascinated by her wandless magic. She was now firm friends with all the Weasley's and Hermione, (although Percy was a bit disapproving of her actions towards Malfoy). The explanation however had conveniently left out the whole 'I'm the daughter of Voldemort and tried to end the world' bit so that may explain her popularity. Willow had told Harry the story behind her apocalyptic actions and he had taken it surprisingly well, so all round it had been a good few days and it was being nicely topped off with a great night. 

Midway through the night they met 'an old school friend' of Bill's, Natasha who definitely had a thing for him. The pair left together about an hour later for an unknown destination, leaving Willow and Charlie to continue dancing and generally having major amounts of fun.

The night ended with the two of them walking back (Apparating was not advisable when drunk) to Willows hotel penthouse and practically collapsing on the bed from exhaustion and falling asleep.

Charlie woke up slowly, at first wondering where he was and then smiling as the previous night came back to him. He looked at the small red head in his arms and sighed. Nothing had happened, he knew that, although how he had come to be shirtless escaped him, they had had such a great night, he sighed again. It had been a while since anyone had made him feel like this woman did, he knew it was stupid, he worked in Romania and she had a job at Hogwarts, it would never work. Oh well, he determined to enjoy it while he could.

She wriggled a bit, snuggling deeper into his embrace, for Charlie, it was pure torture and pleasure rolled up in one neat Willow shaped package. He gave in slightly to his impulses and ran his hand lightly along the length of her arm, she shivered slightly and moved into his touch, he stopped, berating himself for taking advantage of her in her sleep.

He knew he should get up, but he couldn't bring himself to move away from her, she moved again, rolling so that her head now rested on his chest and her silky hair tickled him mercilessly as it moved in time with his breathing. As distracting as her hair was though it was her hand which finally convinced him it was time to move or lose all control, her previous movement had meant that her hand now rested on his upper thigh and he was painfully aware of its innocent warmth.

He moved slowly, trying to ease out from under her without waking her, he made it to the edge of the bed before her eyelids fluttered open and she gazed at him from sleepy green eyes. 

She sensed the minute he woke up, she herself had been awake for several minutes simply lying comfortably in his embrace, thinking over the previous nights events. She kept her eyes closed pretending to sleep, her naughty thoughts leading her to conclude that she might as well have some fun since they were in this rather interesting position.

He was lying behind her with his arms wrapped around her so she squirmed experimentally moving herself closer against him. She cheered silently to herself as her responded by stroking her arms softly, she moved closer still in the hopes of encouraging him, but he stopped. She could practically feel his guilt at his actions. 'Oh well, lets see just how much control he has.' She spoke to herself silently while rolling so they were both now lying on their backs with her head on her chest and for the finishing piece she fluidly moved her hand to sit lightly at the top of his leg, all the while feigning sleep.

'A gentleman to the end,' she thought, entirely unsurprised as she felt him move away from her, 'playtime's over, time to wake up I suppose.'

She opened her eyes to look at him making a good show of stretching and generally looking as though she had just woken.

'Morning,' she said quietly, smiling a little in appreciation of his well toned body, shown of admirably by his currently topless state. 

'Hey Will, I was just about to make breakfast, you want some?'

It was now Saturday afternoon and Willow was sitting with Harry, Ron, Hermione and Charlie having lunch in the small muggle café where she had been asked to meet the representative from Hogwarts.

'Shit!' the exclamation abruptly halted all conversation as everyone turned to face Ron, 'Snape alert.'

Willow followed Ron's pointed glare and saw a broody looking guy walking purposefully in their direction. She had of course heard all about the head of Slytherin House and his tempers and biases but she was reserving judgement as she hoped he would when he met her. It wasn't as if she was completely good and pure herself, in fact she looked forward to having someone with a little dark about them, to talk to and maybe have some fun with. It had been way too long since she did anything even slightly evil (if that mornings escapades weren't included). She was definitely swinging too close to the white for her sanity's comfort, she really needed the balance of grey, and maybe just a little black in her life again.

She watched the man approach, he definitely had a predatory quality to him and his completely black ensemble complemented the aura of darkness that followed him. All in all, he was your typical guy who had tasted the dark-side and found it suited him.

She had a quick look at his magical aura finding the same darkness but noting that it didn't encompass his entire being, this man was not even close to evil, he just had enough in him to be fun. 

While she checked out his aura she noticed that he had a glamour wrapped around him so tightly it was almost part of him, absently she wondered what was under it but was brought back to the present by the fact that he was now standing directly in front of her.

'Miss Rosenburg I presume. I'm Severus Snape, Professor of Potions at Hogwarts.' He extended his hand deliberately ignoring the other occupants of the table.

She took his hand gently, she had decided it was perhaps better for her to project a more innocent aura at this school and she might as well start now.

'Professor Snape, it's nice to meet you, you know everyone here I suppose?' she held in a smirk as his cool gaze took in her companions.

'Indeed, good afternoon Mr Weasley,' he nodded icily in Charlie's direction, continuing to ignore the others. 'Shall we make our way to Diagon Alley, I have rather a long list of items you will need during your stay at Hogwarts?' He punctuated his sentence with a sneer, making it perfectly clear he did not expect her to last long in her new position.

'Sounds great, Charlie I don't suppose you could keep those three out of trouble for a while and I'll meet you all back at your house.' She flashed Charlie a dazzling smile and looked pointedly towards the three teenagers who were attempting to look innocent and failing miserably.

'Sure it's no problem, I'll see you back at the Burrow later.' Charlie returned the grin with a hint of adoration in his gaze.

'Thanks, see you later' she smiled again at Charlie and turned towards Snape with an equally bright expression, 'lead on, I didn't get to do much shopping last time I was in Diagon Alley, this is going to be so much fun.' It really was going to be fun she thought to herself, his reaction to her last statement was priceless, his face took on this look of misery and resignation. He was so easy to wind up.

'What do you mean you don't have a wand?' 

'Look, is it really so hard for all you people to understand, let me break it down for you. You and all your robed wizardy fellows point little sticks and shout to do magic, I don't do that, I don't have a twig, I do magic without one, got it?' The innocent twit act had got boring within the first hour, this man was really beginning to annoy her, so, the bitch was back. 

'Ok Miss Rosenburg, I think I've grasped the concept, now I think our next move should be to go to Ollivanders and buy you a twig so you can point and shout too.' He was smirking again, he's enjoying this she thought and realised at that moment that she was too. It had really been a long time since she had had a good verbal spar with some one.

'Do you think Mr Ollivander does removals too, because you might like to ask him to help with the twig up your ass, I'm fairly sure its unusual to keep your wand up there, as handy and erotic as it may be.' Snape broke into a coughing fit which she was fairly sure was covering up a severe dose of laughter.

They drew curious gazes from many people in the crowd and she figured they must look kind of strange as she walked unconcernedly down the street with Professor Snape almost doubled over choking beside her. She didn't think about it too much however as she was preoccupied with running the pro's and con's of getting a wand through her head. She finally decided to go ahead and get one, after all she didn't necessarily have to use it and it would be good for her to fit in a little more if she wanted to be able to do what she wanted without arousing suspicion. 

They reached the wand shop just as Snape was straightening himself up after recovering from his 'coughing fit'. 'Well here we are Miss Rosenburg, shall we go in?' 

She was well aware that he was avoiding responding to her previous remark but she let it go instead saying as she entered the dusty shop, 'Professor Snape would you please stop calling me Miss Rosenburg, my name is Willow and if we are going to be working together I would prefer if you used it.'

'Very well Willow, if you insist.' He came to a halt just inside the entrance once again looking composed and detached.

Willow watched as a little man scurried over to them, 'Ah Professor Snape, how is your wand, quite unusual if I remember, it took me almost four hours to find the right one for him you know.' She figured he was talking to her and so she replied,' Goddess I hope it doesn't take that long to find mine, I've got a lot more shopping to do today.'

'If that's the case, I'll get straight to business.'

She watched in fascination as tape measures began to fly round her apparently measuring her, but she couldn't make out any kind of system to it. When that was finished Ollivander hurried off and soon returned with four wands in their boxes, he instructed her to 'give them a wave' which she obligingly did, staring in amazement at the destructive results.

'No, no those won't do at all,' Willow opened her mouth to apologise but he waved her off, 'no need to apologise my dear, happens all the time.' 

The ritual of waving and destroying continued for a while but half way through the second hour Willow stopped the little man in his tracks.

'Mr Ollivander this is going nowhere, would you mind if I tried something?'

'Not at all, carry on.' Ollivander obligingly stood still and watched while she closed her eyes in concentration. Carefully she sent tiny pulses of her magic to every wand in the shop being extremely gently since she didn't want to damage any of them.

She felt it the minute she connected with the right one, she opened her eyes and watched as a black box came floating towards her from the far corner of the shop.

It stopped just in front of her and she took the wand letting the box fall to the floor, immediately both she and the wand began to glow brightly and she handed the wand to Ollivander with a satisfied look on her face.

'Hmm,' was the only response she got from the little man. She waited a few seconds for him to continue but quickly lost patience asking, ' what exactly does Hmm mean?'

'This is a very unusual wand my dear, it is not made out of wood as most wands are, it is made from a dragons tooth and unlike any wand I have ever seen it does not have a core at all. It is hollow. It was made by a shaman, I was not convinced it was magical at all but he insisted that its rightful owner would show up at some point, he also asked me to tell that person that to truly use this wand you must put yourself into it. Not that I understand that but he also added that this would not take away from your personal power. Any way good luck with it, I hope it turns out well.'

They paid for the wand and left the shop in silence, opening the door to find it was now night, she wasn't particularly sure what the significance of her wand was but Snape appeared to be pondering it so she left him alone for a while.

Eventually however she got sick of that and decided to distract him, 'I need to get some dark magic items for my class, I want to do some lessons on them, can you give me a hand finding an appropriate shop?'

He nodded absently and led her into a small side street that declared itself to be Knockturn Alley. 'Be careful while we are here, most of the people and things down here are decidedly dark and nasty. There are various demons and dark wizards down here and, oh shit…' she looked towards him and found that he had gone pale, well paler than usual anyway.

'What is it?' she asked, fascinated by whatever it was that got this reaction form him.

'I think I just saw one of the most notorious vampires ever known, we should really go, yeah that's him, let's go.' He turned to go, not realising that Willow was still looking to see who he was talking about. He turned around just in time to see her run off towards the very thing he was trying to escape.

'Spike!' she shouted running up to him and hugging him tightly. She felt him tense and then relax as he saw who it was.

'Hey Red, nice to see you but do you want to let go, you're ruining my image here luv.' Even as he said it he hugged her closer genuinely pleased to see her.

Snape just stared at the scene before him open mouthed. 


	5. Hello Daddy

Sanity in Grey

Sorry it took so long and thank you to every one for reviewing, this chapter is longer than usual and I hope it isn't too slow.

Part 5

'What are you doing here Spike, I thought you were still in LA with Angel?' Willow was so excited to see him, he was the one person from her past that she could really relate to, and still liked.

'I left the poof's hotel about a month ago, came here to get wrecked, visit some friends and get wrecked again. How about you, I didn't even know you knew about this place, and why is that guy just standing there staring at us.' Spike looked towards the man standing a few metres away and watched his Red walk up and pull him firmly back with her.

'Severus this is Spike, Spike this is Severus. Severus is a Professor at the school I'm going to be teaching at. Oh and you really have to meet Harry, he's not here right now but he's amazing, he's my brother coz it turns out my parents aren't actually my parents and my mum was killed by my dad and there is this whole other thing which leads me to really hate my father and I'm babbling again. Spike you've known me long enough to recognise the signs, you should have stopped me.' Willow looked at Spike who just seemed confused, she then turned to Snape but found him staring at Spike with a calculating look in his eyes. 

'Why would I want to stop you when you gave me so much new information.' Spike came out of his daze quickly and answered her demand.

'How exactly do you two know each other?' Willow could tell Snape was trying to seem indifferent but there was definitely an underlying curiosity.

'Oh, Spike tried to kill me a few times.' Willow answered with a smirk knowing that her answer although true was not close to enough information to explain their friendship.

'Yes I can see how that would cement a friendship.' Snapes sarcasm was evident.

'Oh come on Red luv, you know I'm sorry and I would never do that now.' Willow would have laughed as Spike turned his best puppy dog eyes on her, but he looked so unbelievably cute that she couldn't help but tease him.

'But I thought that once you got your chip out you were going to turn me, you can't just back out now I was looking forward to spending my unlife on a reign of terror with you.' Bad Willow, she really shouldn't flirt with Spike, oh well, its fun who cares if it's morally right.

'The offer still stands, you would make one hell of a vampire luv.' He gave her one of his patented smirks and moved closer. She couldn't believe he was making her feel all weak and fuzzy, no one did that to her anymore, it was her who played with them. 

'So you are William the Bloody then?' Snape spoke up ruining their 'moment'. Willow didn't know whether she was relieved or disappointed, she didn't like feeling out of control but it had been kind of nice.

'The one and only.' Spike drawled out his answer. He had enjoyed his last month in Europe. No one here knew about his chip, they still feared him, it was a feeling he had missed.

'Are you going to be in London long, do you want to come while we finish shopping, look I got a wand, isn't it cute. Oh Goddess its your birthday soon isn't it, go away I have to buy you a present, I retract the offer to shop, you are no longer invited.' Willow's brain was working over time, 'never mind, you can still come shopping if you want, I can't think of anything to give you at the moment anyway, I'll have to get it another day.'

She turned to find Spike laughing softly, 'slow down luv, I'm having a little trouble keeping up, and this poor bloke looks lost. He's not used to your babble's you have to break him in gently, otherwise he'll just get lost.' She looked at Severus and found and recognised the expression of extreme confusion Spike had commented on.

She focussed her attention back on Spike giving Snape a little time to compose himself, she tapped her foot impatiently, 'Well?'

'Well what?' she was sure he was being deliberately obtuse.

'Are you coming?' she let her exasperation show in her voice.

'Wouldn't miss it for the world, this is just going to be too funny.'

BOOM BOOM BOOM

'What the hell was that?' Ron looked up from his Quidditch magazine and stared questioningly at Harry.

'I think someone's trying to kick your front door down, I'll get it.' Harry stood up slowly, hurrying up slightly as the banging on the door increased in power.

He opened the door and was almost knocked off his feet as Willow rushed through the door dumping an enormous number of bags on the hallway floor.

'Harry,' Willow breathlessly turned to talk to him, ' is Hermione still here?' in response to Harry's confused nod, Willow flew out of the room, he barely heard the muttered, 'thank the Goddess.'

Two seconds later however he heard her shouting, 'Hermione! Hermione!'

There was an almost panicked edge to her shout and soon the entire household, including Hermione and Harry were gathered round looking very worried.

'Thank God you're still here Hermione, you have to help me, I can't think of anything.' Willow was so worked up she could hardly get her sentence out.

'What is it Willow?' Hermione looked like she couldn't decide whether to be worried at the problem or proud that a teacher was asking her help.

'What can I possibly get a hundred-year old master vampire for his birthday. There is nothing I can think of that he won't have seen or had before, its an impossible task, you have to help me.' Willow didn't even register the alternating surprised and shocked looks of the others in the room, she was too busy hyperventilating. 'Spike's birthday is in two days and I haven't got him a present, what kind of friend am I?' 

Hermione was the first to find her voice, 'You're buying a birthday present for a master vampire called Spike?'

Willow abruptly calmed down and began giggling, ' it does sound sort of crazy doesn't it, but he's on e of my best friends and it's been a long time since he tried to kill me and he apologised for it a couple of times. He doesn't kill people anymore either.' She looked up at their confused faces, 'I guess I should start at the beginning.'

She told them the entire Spike story, starting from when he first came to Sunnydale with Dru. 

She finished speaking after about an hour of Spike history and was sat in silence while they all came to their own conclusions. Everyone jumped when she suddenly leapt out of her chair and bounced out of the room happily shouting Eureka to no one in particular. 

Ron cut across the silence she left behind, 'Harry, no offence but are you sure your sister is completely sane?'

His comment earned him a smack on the head from Charlie who was very obviously infatuated with Willow, strange friends and all.

'What do you think she's getting him?' Ginny asked in a slightly worried tone.

'I honestly don't have a clue.' Was Harry's only answer.

It was two days later and Willow was preparing to leave the Burrow to stay at Hogwarts for the rest of the Summer. Harry was staying with Ron, as was Hermione.

Willow was just getting ready to leave to catch the night Express to Hogsmeade when she heard the doorbell ring. Since she was standing next to the door anyway she pulled it open, smiling broadly as she saw Spike on the other side.

'I thought you weren't coming, you promised to come right after sunset and now I'm only going to see you for a few minutes before I have to go.' Willow tried to look pissed off but failed miserably.

'I'm coming with you pet, that Dumbledore Headmaster guy sent me an owl inviting me to stay for a while.' Spike was almost flattened as the little red head jumped at him and hugged him in response. 'I take it you're pleased then.'

'Of course I'm pleased now wait while I go and say goodbye to Harry, in fact hold on a second, HARRY, we have to leave in about four and a half minutes or we'll miss the train.' She was back to being organised and Spike sighed resignedly knowing it was easier to just follow her plans when she was like this.

Harry came hurriedly out of the kitchen with Hermione, Ron and all the other Weasley's to find Willow talking to a blonde haired man. 'You're Spike right? I'm Harry.' He held out his hand, a little nervous knowing that this guy had probably killed hundreds of people his age.

'Nice to meet you. Well Red you fit right in here, you look like a member of the family, I didn't even know hair could grow that shade of red.' Spike looked at Ginny who blushed but held his gaze.

'I'm going to miss you all, but I'll be back at least once a week.' She hugged each of them in turn, including Charlie who held on for a little longer than the rest, which was duly noted by Spike. She then looked at Mr and Mrs Weasley, 'feel free to punish him in any way if he does something stupid, I completely trust your judgement. Goodbye all of you, I've got to go now. Bye' With one last wave she closed the door behind her and followed Spike into the wizarding taxi.

They sat in companionable silence until they reached the station, (it never ceased to amaze Willow how fast these taxis were.)

They followed Harry's directions to platform nine and three quarters and quickly found a cabin and waited for the train to set off.

Spike broke the silence saying, 'So Weasley has a thing for you.' It was a statement not a question and he waited impatiently to find out if anything was going on between them.

'I don't think Ron thinks about me that way, I'm his best friends older sister.' Willow gave him her most innocent look and turned to look out of the window.

'Don't act stupid, you know exactly which one I meant.' Spike knew she was enjoying this but he couldn't work out why he was so desperate for an answer.

'Oh you mean Charlie. We're friends, I think he would like us to be more, but I don't think about him that way, which reminds me, I have your birthday presents.'

'How did that remind you about my birthday, and wait…you actually got me a present?' Willow laughed, he just looked so shocked and adorable.

'Of course I did, I told you I was going to, you're one of my best friends.' She pulled out two small packages and passed them over to him.

He looked at them only beginning to unwrap them when Willow impatiently ordered him to. 'If you are just going to sit and stare at them I'll take them back.'

He opened the first one and found a small black box containing a quartz crystal. He looked at Willow in confusion.

'I put a spell on it, if you wave it over one of your bags of blood it makes it taste like human blood so no more moaning about how bad pigs blood tastes.' Willow suddenly found herself in a bear hug, not that she minded. 'Well are you going to open the other one?'

He pulled back and tore into the paper of the second present. It too contained a small black box but this time it had a ring inside. The ring was god with an orb of some black stone in its centre.

'It will protect you in the sun.' Spike looked at her, he couldn't believe it, no one had ever been this kind to him. Dru had given him presents, but nothing like this, Willow had given him the Sun. Without thinking, he leaned forward and kissed her gently. 'Thank you' he said as he pulled back, 'that's the nicest thing anyone's ever done for me.'

'Well I couldn't think of anything to get you and it just sort of came to me when I was talking about the Gem of Amara, you're welcome.' She was flushed and confused, how had he made her feel like that. With one small chaste kiss she had felt as thought the world was falling away, she had never felt anything so intense and amazing.

She fell quiet, trying desperately to figure it out and explain what had just happened, this was Spike, her friend, there weren't supposed to be all these other feelings.

Spike watched her quietly, she was confused, it was obvious even though she was fighting to hide it. She wasn't pissed of or disgusted though, that was a good sign. 

Spike had realised when he saw her in Diagon alley that he had feelings for her and he intended to try and get her even though he was sure he didn't deserve her. 'What the hell, may as well go for broke.' He spoke to himself quietly enough that she didn't hear him.

He leaned forward again and this time let the kiss linger and deepen. He put all of his passion into the kiss pulling her to sit on his knee. She responded with equal energy and soon they were lost n each other.

They broke apart and Willow said breathlessly, 'that's the best thank you I've ever had.' 

'So what do we do now?' Spike asked unsure of how she was going to react, or how she felt about him.

'Well we can just take it slow and see where it goes, I mean if you want.' Willow's insecurity was obvious and it was killing her, she just wasn't used to feeling uncertain anymore.

'That sounds good to me.' They spent the rest of the journey in a happy daze chatting and cuddling and doing other couple things.

They got off the train with Willow looking around with curiosity. She noticed a banner hung across the platform with 'Welcome Daughter' written across it in black lettering. 'Check that out, isn't that sweet.' Willow pointed to the sign and took Spikes arm and walked on.

'What luv?' Spike asked in genuine confusion.

'The sign, the one saying 'Welcome daughter'.

Spike turned and looked where she pointed and simply looked more confused, 'luv, there's nothing there.'

'What? You mean you can't see that?' it was Willows turn to look confused.

'If there is something there you are the only one who sees it, either that or there is a no dead people clause.'

Willow was silent for a second, 'looks like daddy's trying to tell me something.'

'Just who exactly is your father? You never told me and I'm guessing Potter's your brother on your mothers side.'

'You ever heard of a guy called Voldemort? Well the summarised version is that he raped my mother and then killed her a few years later. I didn't know about him and he didn't know about me until I went all evil and he felt it along with pretty much everyone else in the magic world. Anyway he's been trying to kill Harry and a whole bunch of other people so he's not my favourite person. I guess he's trying to tell me he knows who I am and what I'm doing.'

If possible Spike turned even paler than usual, 'your Voldemorts daughter, the one the everyones been so worried about, that's almost funny. You know they're not going to be happy if they find out who you are especially if they find out exactly how powerful you are. So what are you going to do now he's contacting you?' Worry filled his voice and he moved closer as though to protect her.

'Well,' she shrugged, 'if he comes near me or anyone I know any time soon, I'll introduce him to bad-ass Willow, if not, I'll make him pay in my own time.'

'I think you might be taking this a bit too lightly, do you know what this guy has done, how many people follow him, how much power he actually has.' 

'Not as much as I have I don't think, but it doesn't matter, I wont let him hurt us and I will make him pay for what he's done.' She waved her hand in the direction of the banner, 'Damn I still can't get used to having a wand, I haven't used it once since I got it.'

'What did you do pet?'

'I left daddy a little message, don't look at me like that, all it says is 'Hello Daddy'. I even put cute little flowers in the background and there are teddy bears playing hide and seek behind the letters. It's a loving gesture from daughter to father.'

'Don't you think you're overdoing the sweet and innocent thing a bit?' Spike laughed at her description but still looked worried.

'Not at all, this is about showing him I'm not scared of him and that I'm strong.' Willow smiled happily, it felt good to have something to focus on, and playing with her darling father was a project she could really sink her teeth into.

'How does that show your power, no offence love but any half-wit with a wand can re-write a banner.' 

'There were wards and spells keeping it from being changed, I broke them. Can we forget abut this just now, I want to see my new work and I'm kinda curious about why Dumbledore wanted to see you.' This was Willows less than subtle way of distracting Spike. A plan was forming in her head and she didn't want Spike to know, he would only try and stop her. She was going to destroy Voldemort from the inside out and make him suffer in a million different slow and painful ways for what he had done. Evil Willow was gonna have some fun.

The walked towards the quaint village they could see outside the station chatting easily about other subjects and were almost knocked over by a giant man running around a corner.

'I'm sorry 'bout that, are you Spike and Miss Rosenberg?' at their dazed nods he carried on, 'hello, I'm 'agrid, I'm the Care of Magical Creatures Professor, I was sent to get you, sorry I'm a bit late.' The pride in his voice when he talked about his job was obvious and it gave Willow an easy way to befriend him.

'Really, what kind of creatures do you work with, have you ever seen a dragon? I've always wanted to see one, Charlie promised to let me visit him in Romania and see his dragons.' The innocent enthusiasm in her voice when she talked about dragons was infectious and made Hagrid like her immediately. She did however notice that Spike looked less than pleased when she mentioned visiting Charlie, she filed that piece of info in the back of her mind for later use.

She listened carefully to Hagrid who could not stop talking about the creatures he obviously loved and surprisingly found herself quite interested. She slowly began to warm to Hagrid and think of him as a friend instead of someone she may need at a later date. He was a lovely person, more innocent than she could ever pretend to be.

Hagrid led them to a beautiful traditional horse and carriage, at least it would have been traditional if it had had horses. They drove slowly taking in the scenery with Willow and Hagrid chatting happily and Spike contributing at intervals. 

A few minutes into the drive they were interrupted by a small hawk diving through the window with a message attached to its leg.

'Hey where did you come from?' Willow spoke more to herself than the hawk as she quickly unrolled the paper.

'Are you the lady who can talk to our kind, I have heard of you, I came from the snake-man in the village.' The hawk replied giving Willow a shock until she remembered her previous encounter with the owl.

'So he's here is he? Must want to keep a close eye on me. Do you want something to eat? I can summon something for you.' She guessed from the description that it was Voldemort who had sent the message and it was confirmed when she read it.

__

You are just as powerful as I had hoped daughter, however I am unsure if bears are an appropriately dignified symbol for ones with the power we wield. I shall be in touch. 

'Some bacon would be nice, it's my favourite but no one seems to notice. Will you be writing back?' The hawk's words cut across her train of thought. She quickly summoned a couple of pieces of bacon from the nearest kitchen (where ever that was she hoped they didn't mind, scrap that she didn't really care.)

She looked up to find Hagrid and Spike looking at her questioningly, 'its from my dad,' she stated quickly seeing worry appear on Spikes face but seeing no ease in the confusion on Hagrids features.

'Willow were you talking to the Hawk, you were twittering.' Hagrid looked quite awed as though it was an amazing talent.

'Yes I discovered I could talk to magical birds when the owl came with the letter from Hogwarts, I'm not sure if it extends to all magical creatures of just the birds.' She paused for a second and turned to the hawk who was happily chewing on the bacon, 'I will be sending a reply, just give me a second.'

'She waved her hand to change the lettering on the message and found even stronger magic protecting this than the banner, Voldemort was obviously testing her. She broke through these with just a fraction more effort and tied her reply to the hawk who was now finished eating and flew out of the window with a quick thank you for the bacon. 


	6. Mirror, mirror

Yay, I finally got round to completing this part, the beginning has been sitting on my computer for months so big apologies for the lateness. 

Part 6

Spike looked at Willow with a mixture of curiosity and worry on his features when he heard that the letter was from Voldemort. Willow looked at him, her eyes holding a warning as she nodded slightly in Hagrids direction, obviously not wanting to talk about her father in front of him. Spike nodded his acceptance but his eyes also held the promise that they'd be talking about this later.

Hagrid seemed to sense her reluctance to say anymore on the subject and immediately began bombarding her with questions about what he thought was a much more interesting subject, the fact that she could talk to magical birds. This conversation filled the rest of the journey to Hogwarts but came to an abrupt end as Willows attention was stolen by the sight of the very impressive castle.

She stepped into the cool night air very much in awe of the building in front of her, not only did it look like something out of Disney, it practically sang with magical energy - on second thoughts it was more of a hum, she really couldn't imagine something as old and majestic bursting into song, yeah, definitely more of a dignified hum, maybe a hymn or a Celtic ballad or...- 

Willow was abruptly pulled out of her mental babble by an old guy in desperate need of a shave walking down the entrance steps to greet them. 

'I would like to welcome you both to Hogwarts,' the old man grinned broadly before continuing, 'however I have to admit that I am at a loss for what to call you.' He looked at Spike as he said, 'what would you prefer, William the Bloody, Mr. Bloody or is it just plain Spike.' 

Willow smothered a giggle as Spike gave a low growl at the option of 'Mr. Bloody', 'Spikes just fine mate.' He held his hand towards the bearded man, 'and you are?' she had to admit she was impressed, spike was actually being quite polite, even if he did sound like he was forcing the words out through clenched teeth.

'I'm sorry, how rude of me, I'm Albus Dumbledore, the headmaster,' he shook both their hands vigorously, 'if you want to come and get settled in. I have had a sort of apartment arrangement prepared for you, with two bedrooms and a sitting room, I hope you will excuse the liberty but I thought you might feel more comfortable together.' All the while he was saying this, his eyes had a certain glint that gave the impression that he at least had a clue about their budding relationship. 

They followed him as he lead the way into the school, 'Wow, this is pretty cool.' Willow stared at the painting on the walls with the people moving in them. The entire castle pulsed with magic, the power flowing around her, just begging to be used. It was so tempting just to reach out and make something happen, and she could, no one would judge her here. They wouldn't accuse her of using too much magic, magic was used for everything, the lights, the paintings event the ceiling, she was free to do what she wanted as long as it didn't hurt anyone.

She wasn't too sure it was entirely sensible of Dumbledore allowing her to shape young minds but at least she could make it a little more fun for them to learn and she was definitely qualified, few people knew more about the dark-side than she did. She giggled at the thought and Spike turned around to look at her questioningly, 'it's nothing, I was just thinking that I'm fighting against the dark-side, I'm like Yoda.'

She bust into a fresh bout of laughter, while Spike just smirked in amusement, wondering that this giggling woman was among the most feared being on this planet at one point. Looking at her now, no one would guess what she was capable of and he supposed that was what she wanted. He knew that she was not as innocent as she pretended to be, it was part of his attraction to her, she was known to have some rather evil tendencies but she still managed to keep a kind of childlike fun about her. That and she could work the whole innocence routine like no one he had ever met, she could wrap people around her finger practically no effort what so ever. It was as though she had spent so many years being used by other people and now she was paying it back with interest.

He was so proud of her. 

Dumbledore led them through the stone corridors and up stairs to a portrait on the third floor. Willow and Spike looked at him expectantly as he began to speak to the occupants, a man with a sword and a large feathered hat and a woman dressed in a very low-cut peasant's outfit. 'Now Rose,' he began in a stern voice, 'go back to your own painting, I must talk to Monsieur Aramis alone, you may come back later when I am gone.' He winked at Aramis as the woman wandered away through the neighboring paintings, 'Now Aramis, these are Spike and Willow, they will be staying in this suite.' He turned to the couple, 'if you choose a password, Aramis will only allow people to enter who know it, and I suggest you change it every week or so. Our students have been known to be quite nosy and inquisitive to say the least, and you don't want to return to your rooms to find them full of stink bombs do you.' He said all this with a twinkle in his eye that showed he was quite proud of his students and their enterprising schemes. 

The entered their rooms and found a living area with a fireplace, a few bookshelves and some really comfy looking armchairs.

Willow opened the door closest to her and found a large bedroom with an old fashioned bed up against the far wall, there was all the usual things, a wardrobe etc and a really cute little desk in the corner. 

Having satisfied her curiosity she walked back out and through the next door where she found Spike with his back to her making a loud screeching sound as he stood in front of a full length mirror.

'Hello, oh excuse me,' Willow did a double take as she realized that the voice was coming from the mirror.

'Um…hi.' Willow waved vaguely in the direction of the mirror. She grinned as Spike suddenly became quiet and turned towards her smoothing imaginary creases out of his clothes and looking embarrassed.

'Could you be a dear and tell me where that awful noise was coming from, it gave me quite a fright.' The mirror had an old lady voice that shook slightly as though recovering from a shock.

'Yeah, I have to admit, I'm curious about that noise too, Spike do you want to explain?' She was pretty sure that if it were possible Spike would have blushed.

'She can't see me.' the words were mumbled but Willow heard him, 'I picked up a book when I came in, she thought it was floating, it was funny, I just got a bit carried away is all.' He struggled to regain his normal, confident attitude after being caught doing something so childish.

Willow thought for a moment, 'it makes sense I suppose since you don't have a reflection.'

'Who are you talking to dear?' the mirror chimed in again her tone of voice clearly showing that she was beginning to doubt the sanity of the girl standing talking to thin air.

'There is a vampire in the room, I think you can't see him because he has the whole no reflection thing going on.' Willow was silent for a second before adding, 'how the hell do you shave?'

'Carefully.' Was the only answer Spike gave, 'look luv, I don't suppose you could forget you saw that.' Willow just looked at him, 'No didn't think so.' 

They moved to leave the room but halted at the door as the mirror added, 'Do you really think it's wise to have a vampire in your rooms dear, I hear they are quite unsanitary.'

Spike pushed her out of the room and slammed the door behind them, striding over to the third door in an effort to get away from Willow who had collapsed laughing into one of the chairs in the living area.

'Wow pet, you gotta see this,' Spike spoke loudly over her laughter.

She dragged herself off the chair and toward Spike, her laughter stopping as she took in the wonder before her. 'That bath's olympic sized,' was all she could manage to say.

'I know luv,' the familiar smirk took over Spikes features as he made an obvious show of looking her over, 'imagine the possibilities.'

If he had expected her to blush he was disappointed, Willow leered right back at him, 'oh believe me, I am.'

When the knock came on their door an hour later Willow emerged from their rooms with her hair still dripping.

'I'm sorry to intrude on you while you're settling in but I thought I should introduce myself. I'm Professor Flitwick, Albus asked me to aid you in the use of your wand since it is entirely new to you. I thought perhaps we could arrange a time for us to meet that would be suitable for you, I know you will be very busy during the remainder of the holidays.'

'It's nice to meet you,' she shook his hand and smiled warmly, 'I'm so sorry I'm dripping all over you, I just got out of the bath. Would you like to come in?'

They entered the room and sat down, 'I have to admit I'm glad you're here, I have been looking to pick some ones brains all day. You don't mind if I ask you a few questions do you.' On seeing his nod she continued, 'I was wondering what kind of dangers the students are likely to come up against in their lives, I mean are we talking vamps or demons or are evil wizards the biggest problem?'

Willow's "few questions" kept them occupied well past dark and only stopped when Spike interrupted to complain that he was hungry and Flitwick got a kind of nervous jumpy look as he hurriedly excused himself. It appeared that not all of the Hogwarts staff were entirely comfortable with having a vampire on the premises.

'So luv, what are your plans for the rest of the night,' Spike picked her up off the chair and sat her back down again, this time on his lap.

'Well, I was actually thinking about visiting my dear old dad, its not nice to just ignore family. I thought I could maybe spy, make life a little uncomfortable, maybe torture and kill him, I really don't know, I'm just going to go with the flow, see what happens.' Willow looked at him with an evil smirk on her face as her eyes darkened with power.

'I was thinking more along the lines of us going for another bath,' he ran his hands up her arms suggestively, 'But I suppose I could go for a little murder and mayhem, count me in.'

End part 6

Dragonmage


	7. The spirit of evil

Usual disclaimer, not mine, wish it was, etc

Sorry this one's kinda short but I thought I should post what I had, in case my muse goes on leave.

Part 7

'No offence luv, but do you even know where the guy is?' Spike walked beside Willow as she headed out of the front door and out through the ground the same way they had come in earlier that day. 

'The owl told me he was in the village and once I'm close enough I should be able to sort out his magic signature from the spells cast on the letter. If you don't want to come Spike, it's not a problem, I can handle this myself.' Her eyes were growing darker as she spoke and her strides were getting longer. Her bastard father had raped and killed her mother, it was his fault she had grown up thinking Sheila and Ira were her parents, having to deal with the pain of knowing they didn't care about her and he had hurt her brother. It all added up to a very angry Willow and a very soon to be dead Voldemort. 

'So, tell me again why we're walking, can't we just do that apparating thing everyone here seems so fond of?' Spike was trying to distract her, if she went into the fight this angry it would cloud her judgement, and since he fully intended to get them both out of this alive, that was definitely a bad thing.

'It's against the rule to do that within the grounds, it's my first day here, I think breaking the rules would create a bad impression.' She bit out the words impatient to start kicking some paternal ass.

Finally they reached the gates and Willow immediately used her magic to bring them to the centre of the village of Hogsmeade.

'You feel anything yet, coz I've gotta say I'm putting my money on the big haunted house over there, I think your dads the kind of psycho that likes a good cliché.' Spike continued to try to lighten the atmosphere, knowing that he was fighting a losing battle.

'Give me a minute.' Her voice came out as a harsh warning, clearly telling him not to interrupt again. 'There are a lot of magical signatures, it's gonna take a moment to sort through.' Her eyes remained open, deep black pools, staring into space as though she could see things that no one else could, which was probably true. 'Got it.' A wicked smile lit up her face as she marched purposefully towards the edge of town farthest from the school.

Spike followed as she walked to the door of a very normal looking house and blasted it in with a wave of her hand while he watched proudly, never let it be said that his girl couldn't make an entrance.

'Who the hell are you?' a man came running down the stairs and stood in front of Willow blocking her way, he either couldn't feel the power surrounding her, or he was too stupid to be scared.

'I'm not here to see you.' She used her power to throw the man back up the stairs and crashing through a door at the top, 'I'm here to see my Daddy.'

She floated up the stairs, her hair and eyes were now pitch black and veins were beginning to show on the surface of her skin.

She felt the thread of magic she had been following pull her towards the door on her right and she left the man slumped unconscious on the floor of the room where he had fallen. Once again she blasted the door, sending it flying off its hinges and well into the room beyond.

'So daughter,' a voice hissed sinisterly from the shadows at the far end of the room, 'you have come to join me at last.'

'I've come to kill you,' she contradicted flatly, her voice almost devoid of emotion, her rage had become overwhelming but she poured it into her magic, making it stronger, gathering it between her palms in a twisted ball of black flame.

'Goodbye dad, see you in hell.' She released the magic, the ball of flame crashed into the dark wizard and seemed to consume him. Satisfied she moved back towards the door but was stopped by the sound of ethereal screams echoing through the room. The sound seemed to come from many throats at once and vibrated through her skull painfully finally subsiding as the black flame died away, only to be replaced by the chilling sound of laughter.

She spun back around to see her father still sitting across the room, seemingly untouched by her power. 'Very impressive, but as you can see not very effective, you can try again if you like, but first I would like you to meet some 'friends' of mine.' He sneered at the word 'friends' as he pulled his wand from his pocket, muttering an incantation that she didn't quite make out.

White mist formed in the space between them, slowly resolving into vaguely human shapes, 'these are the spirits of my victims, they are bound to protect me from magic through some rather tricky blood rituals. You heard them screaming earlier, your little spell must have been quite painful for them.'

Willow paled, her face losing the veins as the shock of what she had done set in, she had tortured the souls of the people he had murdered, they were innocent, they didn't deserve that.

Voldemorts voice cut over her thoughts, 'oh my dear, look over there, I believe that's your mother, most people would have settled for a hello, but I'm sure she'll understand why you put her through that. She was a very understanding person and I have to say she looked stunning when she was bruised and bleeding.'

His words pulled her out of her shocked state and her anger returned, bringing the flare of her magic as always. She stopped thinking for a moment, pushing her anger back to allow her to go over what he had told her. The spirits protected him from spells not physical harm, say from a fire? She would kill him for what he had done, for the torture he was inflicting, he had her mothers soul. 

The last thought tore away her rational thought and the magic flowed from her body, flames tore through the house, intent on destroying every living thing within. Willow collapsed to her knees, the force of the emotions and the overuse of magic left her drained and weak.

She fell to the floor, struggling to stay aware, feeling the heat of her own fire closing in while smoke filled her lungs. Looking up, the last thing she saw before losing consciousness was Voldemort disappearing from the room.

End part.

Dragonmage


	8. Bribery and corruption

Authors note: this takes place after the fourth book since I started it ages ago.

Part 8

'I can't believe she went after him alone, what was she thinking?' Minerva McGonagle stood in the medical ward at Hogwarts looking anxiously at the pale figure unconscious on a bed several meters away.

'Ah but she didn't go alone did she,' Snape directed his attention to the worried vampire clutching Willow's hand from her bed side, his disdain clear in his voice, 'she took Spike.'

'And a good thing she did.' Minerva answered sharply, feeling the urge to defend the distressed man. 'If he hadn't been there she would have died, he damned near killed himself getting her out of that fire. Urgh,' the woman made a frustrated noise and began to pace the width of the room, 'I just wish I knew what happened, can't you try to get some sense out of Spike, he might have calmed down a bit by now.'

'I highly doubt that, Albus couldn't get anything from him, I don't think he is exactly going to open up to me.' the stubborn look on Snapes' face showed clearly that he would not be swayed and the two teachers stood for a few minutes in silence.

They watched in amusement as Madame Pomfrey swooped in on the blonde vampire and began applying some kind of lotion to his many cuts and burns. Spike growled at her as she pulled his hand away from Willow in order to change the bandage on his hand but she just gave him a stern look and persisted.

'Damn it woman,' Spike jumped to his feet with his demon face showing, 'will you leave me be, I'm a bloody vampire, I'll heal fine on my own, will you just fix up Red, she's the one who's dying.'

Snape reached for his wand and began to point it towards the snarling demon but stopped short as the schools nurse showed no signs of intimidation.

'As I have explained before, Miss Rosenberg is not dying, she has several spells working to clear the smoke out of her lungs and various quick healing potions on her other wounds. Now will you sit down while I look at your hand because I do not believe Miss Rosenberg would be pleased to wake up and see you looming over her like a half carved, burnt ham.' The medi-witch was obviously working hard to maintain an even, authoritative voice, but even so, her frustration with her patient was clear and she gave a small sigh of relief as Spike returned to his seat and allowed her to continue her ministrations. 

'Ask him now,' Professor McGonagle suggested in a whisper, reinforced with a nudge to the ribs with her elbow.

Snape simply looked at her wondering what was making this normally quite sensible and formidable woman act in such a childish manner.

'Oh don't look at me like that Severus Snape, I realise that I am acting slightly giddy,' she grimaced in embarrassment as she realised how well that description fitted. 'I spent two years doing a study of vampires before I became a Professor at this school and you will have to excuse me if I am a little excited at the current situation. I may actually be able to converse with one of the most notorious vampires in the last few centuries. Call it professional curiosity if you will.'

'Then let me ask, out of purely professional curiosity of course, why is it that you are trying to convince me to have this conversation that you are so "giddy" about.' Snape smirked at the look of annoyance on his colleagues' face and watched as she marched towards Spike without another word. 

'I don't suppose I could ask for a moment of your time Mr Spike,' the Professor returned as much as possible to her normal brisk, business-like tone. 'It is imperative that we know exactly what happened between Miss Rosenberg and He Who Must Not Be Named, lives could depend on it.' 

Spike took a second to look her in the eye, unnerving her slightly before answering, 'when Red here wakes up she'll either tell you or not, got nothin' to do with me.' With that said he returned to watching Willow, as if he could heal her by sheer concentration and Minerva returned to her previous place beside Severus.

'If it's any consolation, he told Albus to "fuck of mate", so you could add poetically gifted to the list of known talents of vampires.' He patted her shoulder in a gesture of mock consolation before turning to wards the door. 'This is all rather pointless, we are obviously not going to learn anything until Willow wakes up, and I for one have better things to do than stand around here waiting.' With that said he strode out of the room, his robes billowing behind him.

With a brief glance at the odd couple across the room, Professor McGonagle also left, managing to do without the over-dramatic robe movement, and quietly shut the door behind her, leaving Spike to his silent vigil.

Two days later.

Willow sat staring at the tray of food in front of her contemplating levitating it at the overbearing nurse, medi-witch person at the end of her bed in the hospital wing.

She had woken up yesterday afternoon, pretty much feeling like shit, but she had gathered her almost fully restored magical energy and sorted out the damage to her lungs and put a lot of effort into the regenerating the burnt skin cells so they wouldn't scar. The effort had pretty much exhausted her, so she had fallen asleep and now she was all awake and feeling fine and the damn woman wouldn't let her out of bed.

'For the last time I'm fine, there is nothing wrong with me anymore, I am healed, fixed, repaired, fully functional, bloody hunky dory, now will you please let me out of this bed I have things to do….Urgh.' Willow flopped back onto her pillows, rolling her eyes to the heavens in a plea for help.

'Bribes,' she blurted out in a moment of inspiration, 'do you take bribes, I have a beautiful seventeenth century spell book, hand written. 'She looked up hopefully only to see the woman shake her head in amusement, 'No? Ok then, how about a herbal grimore?' Madame Pomfrey just looked at her, eyebrows raised, 'guess not. Hmm, money, lots of money, erm…a pony, everyone loves ponies, one with cute little ears and a twitchy tail, no? Do you want my soul.' She was getting more frustrated and desperate by the minute. 'I hear they're fetching a great price on the black market these days…Oh come on, there must be something. Dumbledore said I wasn't to leave until you gave the all clear, now I know he's my new employer and everything but I'm seriously beginning to consider blowing one of you up.'

Willow sat in silence for a moment watching as the brand new public enemy number one, straightened out the room, 'I could just not blow you up, that's gotta be worth something, right?'

She never got the chance to expand on the merits of not being blown up because at that moment the door of the hospital wing burst open and Harry came sprinting through and flung himself at her, hugging her tightly. 

'Some air would be appreciated.' She spoke the words teasingly but Harry jumped back quickly, obviously just remembering her supposedly injured state.

'How are you feeling, are you ok?' Harry's face showed real concern as he asked and Willow was genuinely touched.

'I'm fine,' she said tossing a glare in the nurses direction, 'I'll be even better when I get out of here.'

'I'm glad you're alright,' his warm smile quickly changed to a frown and he began to scold her loudly. 'What were you thinking going after Voldemort, did you not listen to all the things we told you, have you any idea how stupid that was. Do you know what he could have done to you? He almost killed you, I can't believe you were so irresponsible…'

Willows attention wandered as she saw the door open and Spike return from wherever he had disappeared to when she had begun trying to negotiate her release.

'Yeah well he agreed to it,' she pointed her finger at the bleached vampire, trying to distract some of Harry's lecture away from her.

'Believe me luv, if I'd known you were aiming for crispy fried Willow, I'd never have agreed.' He looked at Willow, who was giving her best puppy dog eyes and relented. 'Anyway, I don't see how the kid here can complain, from what I've heard he's gone after Voldemort every year since he was eleven.' He grinned at Harry who glared back at him.

'It doesn't really matter, everything turned out fine, let's just forget about it for now, we have more important things to discuss. Harry I want you to think about this carefully, what is Madame Pomfreys secret weakness?' 

Willow sat in the bed waiting eagerly for an answer but was once again interrupted by the door being flung open.

Five wizards in plain black robes marched into the room and took up the free space around her bed. One of the men pulled out a piece of parchment and spoke in a commanding tone 'Willow Rosenberg?' It was more of a statement than a question but she nodded anyway and the man continued. 'You are being placed under arrest. You will be taken to the Ministry of Magic where you will stand trial charged with the wilful destruction of property by means of arson. As an American citizen you will be entitled to consult with a representative from your country's Ministry. Now will you come with us please.' 

End Part

Dragonmage


	9. I'm Dead

My muse Bob decided to return to work today after a long lecture about why unfinished things are bad, so here is part 9, making this story a little bit closer to completion. I'm actually not too sure if I like this chapter, it gets a little bit too technical with the explanations for my taste, but Bob assures me it's all necessary.

So anyway, here we go.

Part 9 

Spike growled at the officials now surrounding Willow's bed, placing himself in front of the man who had read the charge of arson, blocking his view of Willow. 

'Will you step aside Sir, this doesn't need to be unpleasant.' The speakers' hand twitched inside his pocket giving away the fact that he was reaching for his wand.

'It's all right Spike,' Willow gently placed a calming hand on his arm, 'I can't possible go with these gentlemen at the moment anyway. You see I was badly burnt in the fire.' She held out her arms which were still wrapped in bandages at Madame Pomfreys insistence, knowing full well that there was absolutely nothing wrong with the skin beneath them. 'I won't be able to leave this bed for at least a few days yet.'

'Miss, we are under orders to detain you until your trial and I'm afraid that you will be coming with us.' He spoke firmly, pulling his wand out and pointing it at her, beginning to speak the spell that would conjure restraints only to find himself gasping for air as Spike's hand closed around his windpipe.

'I wouldn't finish those words if I were you mate,' Spike snarled and vamped out, acting purely from the instinct to save Willow.

The other four men had their wands out now and were pointing them at the blonde vampire. The situation would likely have ended in a massive body count if Albus Dumbledore hadn't chosen that moment to walk into the room.

'Little Allen Mills, I haven't seen you since you left Hogwarts,' Dumbledore addressed the man Spike was choking in a cheerful everyday voice, seemingly ignoring the current, volatile situation. 'How are you?' The question seemed ridiculous given that her was very obviously being slowly strangled by an enraged vampire, but the headmaster continued undeterred. 'What are you doing here? And I must say, you do seem to be in a bit of a predicament.' He reached a hand out to Spikes shoulder, getting his attention. 'Do you think it would be possible for you to release Mr. Mills for a moment so that we may talk?'

Spike looked towards Willow before answering and seeing her nod, reluctantly agreed, 'as long as he don't attack my Red, he'll be fine.'

'Don't worry,' Dumbledore reassured, 'no one will be injuring Miss Rosenberg while she is within the school grounds.'

But headmaster,' one of the other robed men broke his silence, 'we have orders for her arrest, she is to stand trial for arson in Hogsmeade.'

'Ah Mr. McKay, I almost didn't recognize you, I see you finally managed to remove the purple dye charm from your hair, I have to say, that took some getting used to. As for the young lady, the fire was the result of a Deatheater attack, my newest member of staff was simply in the wrong place at the wrong time and you can see she was quite severely injured and should not be moved in any case. If you insist, her wand will be submitted for inspection, and I assure you that you will find no traces of any kind of spell which would lead to such a destruction of property.' Now that the Professor seemed to be focussing on the situation, he was resolving it quite nicely, definitely not telling the truth but not exactly lying either, it really depended on you interpretation of events.

Willow grinned at the old man, admiring the extraordinary display of manipulation she had just witnessed, she had definitely misjudged the man.

'Now if we could just leave Miss Rosenberg to rest…' Dumbledore made a sweeping gesture towards the door, almost herding the rather confused men from the room.

She heard a last ditch effort to regain control and authority from 'little Allen Mills' but it was dismissed by a promise of owling the Ministry and an inquiry about whether his mother was still baking those 'absolutely mouthwatering chocolate brownies'. Willow had no doubt that Allen Mills was a lot easier to deal with when he was being embarrassed by stories of his mothers cooking in front of his work colleagues.

Harry's voice pulled her from her dissection of Dumbledore's maneuverings, truthfully she had almost forgotten his presence entirely.

'I thought you said that Spike couldn't hurt people anymore?' As Harry spoke his eyes slid nervously to the blonde vampire who was pacing angrily around the room, distracted enough that h missed the quiet question.

'He can't, he has the chip…' Willow's voice faded away and she began to think over the situation furiously. 'Spike?' she called out quietly, but Spike was to agitated to notice.

'Spike?' The second call was louder and Spike came over to her bedside, looking worried.

'What is it luv, did they hurt you and I missed it, I'll tear them apart if they did.' He resumed his pacing but confined it to the area around her bed, his face a mask of rage.

'I don't suppose you have a headache at all?' The seemingly unrelated nature of the question brought Spike to a halt and he just shook his head. 'Didn't think so,' Willow began running the possible benefits of this situation through her mind. 'Your chip's stopped working, the magic must have shorted it out or something. Please let me be the first to congratulate you on your return to the world of mayhem, torture and murder.'

She watched as Spike sat down heavily on the edge of the bed, she was almost certain that he had changed enough for this to be a good thing instead of a 'lets go on an evil murdering rampage' thing. To tell the truth, she liked the idea of having a fully functional vampire at her beck and call, just because she loved him didn't mean she couldn't use him.

That thought brought her brought her scheming mind to a full stop. No. She did not love Spike, she was just using him, he was gorgeous and funny with over a century of sexual experience and he had just become extremely useful. There was no love involved. She was using him for sex, and to maybe terrify and injure people at her will. Nope, absolutely no love.

She was brought sharply back from Denial-ville by a soft question from the vampire beside her, his face and body unnaturally still, betraying no emotion. 'Do you want me to leave?' He may have been able to mask the emotions on his face but she could hear the trace of insecurity in his voice as he spoke.

'What? No! Why would you think that?' she looked him in the eye, trying to communicate her acceptance.

'I can kill again, and I will not promise not to, it's my nature, I don't have a soul to make me feel guilty. I will probably kill people, not anyone close to you, I can promise that, but I won't lie to you. If you want me to go, I'll go.' He turned his face away from her, refusing to look at her again, obviously feeling certain of her rejection.

'I think you're forgetting who you're talking to, I'm not the Willow you knew back in Sunnydale, I have no problem with seeing the people get what they deserve. Can you limit yourself to evil guys and maybe a bit of mental torture for goblins who take too much commission on currency exchanges?' she smiled reassuringly, hoping he could agree and stay here with her.

Spike reached up his hand to stroke her face lightly, 'I think I can live with that, I always was loves bitch.' He pulled his hand back, realizing what he had just let slip, 'um, I mean…' He trailed off as he tried to think of something to cover his indirect declaration of love. 'Bugger!' he said loudly and suddenly reached forward and pulled her towards him, kissing her violently, hoping it would be enough to distract her.

'Um, Willow,' Harry's voice came from the side as he fidgeted uncomfortably while the couple on the bed continued to kiss passionately, oblivious to his presence. 'I'm just going to leave now,' he walked quietly around the bed to the exit, his embarrassment increasing by the second and he rapidly closed the doors behind him, refusing to look as soft moans filled the room behind him. 

To tell the truth, he wasn't all that sure about the new arrangement between his sister and Spike. He thought about it seriously as he walked to the rooms where he was staying for the next few days. At one point in his life he would have been against death for anyone, but now, when he thought about Voldemort and the Deatheaters and all the things they had done in the past and were capable of doing in the future, he couldn't help but think that they deserved any punishment Spike could devise.

He entered the same corridor that Willow and Spike were living in and said his password to the suit of armor that marked the entrance to his temporary rooms. He flopped down into one of the comfortable armchairs and looked around for something to do, desperate for anything to distract his mind from what Willow was doing at this moment. His eyes finally came to rest on his list of homework for the Summer, 'oh well,' he thought resignedly, 'may as well get it over with.' He picked up the parchment and the books he needed and made his way to the library, confident that this would probably be the best homework he had ever done because he wasn't stopping until the images of Willow and Spike were pushed out of his mind.

'Well my dear, are you feeling better today?' Professor McGonagle stood looking at the redhead who was casually sitting on the edge of one of the desks in her transfiguration classroom.

'I'm fine thanks,' it had been two days since the men from the Ministry had barged into the hospital wing intent on arresting her and Dumbledore had sent a letter detailing the highly edited rather creative interpretation of events along with her unused wand to the Minister of Magic himself. The warrant for her arrest had subsequently been dropped and her wand returned, although there were apparently discussions being held to determine whether anything should be done about the vampire resident at Hogwarts, but nothing had come of that so far.

'I still can't get this wand thing to work though, I did some investigating on wands in general and apparently it's the core that supplies the magic, the wood and length is simply a focus. With that considered, I really don't see how mine can possible work.' She looked at the woman in front of her, willing her to come up with an explanation. 

'Well what is the core of your wand?' Minerva inquired, admittedly curious about why such a powerful witch was unable to use something every wizard needed.

Willow frowned, 'see, that's just the problem, the guy who sold me it said there is no core, and I would simply dismiss him as a fraud if I didn't feel some connection with the stupid bit of dragons' tooth.'

'Dragons' tooth? Oh my, did Mr. Ollivander say anything else,' the Professor's forehead creased as she tried to come up with a solution, the ancient wand-maker had never been wrong yet, and she had no reason to believe he would start now.

'Well, he said that he hadn't made the wand,' she turned her mind back, trying to remember the details of the conversation. 'The guy that did said, to put myself into it, or something like that.'

Minerva puzzled over this for a few minutes before speaking, 'you said that there is no core, does that meant he wand is hollow?' She paused, waiting for Willow's nod of agreement. 'Have you tried filling the space with your own power, not many wizards have enough power to do magic without the wand to focus it and the core to amplify it. It is possible that, with the amount of magic held within you, if a core tried to amplify your spells, the magic may become uncontrollable. If this works, it may simply act as a conduit to channel your energy and allow you to refine your magic and enable more subtle use.' As all the pieces of the puzzle came together, the woman felt immensely satisfied with her explanation and slightly impatient to discover whether it was correct or not.

'That would explain the dragons tooth, for my bigger spells an ordinary wooden wand might not be able to handle the pressure.' Willow mused over the hypothesis, examining it for flaws in the logic and finding none. 'Well, might as well try it, just give me a moment.'

Willow crossed her legs on top of the desk and settled down with her eyes closed, concentrating on nudging power gently towards the center of the wand until it would hold no more. 'Done.' Her eyes snapped open and she stood up, wanting to see if it had worked.

'Why don't you try it with one of the easy charms,' suggested Professor McGonagle helpfully, 'Accio feather!' a moment after she spoke the words and waved her wand a small feather cam racing into the room and dropped onto the table in front of her. 'Normally this would be Flitwick's area, but I think I'm capable of this small thing, just point at the feather with your wand, swish and flick it like this.' She gave a quick demonstration, watching as Willow copied it meticulously, 'and say, Wingardium leviosa.'

A look of concentration appeared on Willow's face as she copied both gesture and pronunciation exactly, looking pleased with herself, until she noticed that not only had the feather floated into the air, but so had the small portion of table directly underneath it. The piece of wood detached itself from the table, leaving a small, feather shaped hole in the desk.

'Well, I have to say, I've never seen that happen before, what do you think happened?' Minerva watched fascinated as the feather and wood hovered just above head height. 

'Well I sort of concentrated on the area of the feather and thought that I wanted it to lift, I don't suppose I specified that it had to lift off of the table. Apparently this wand really does focus on exactly what it is directed to do, it's like the will be done spell all over again, although Spike better not want to marry Buffy or the hellmouth might be one slayer short.

Minerva ignored the odd reference, not at all sure she wanted to hear the story behind it, 'Do you want to try something else?' Willow nodded and she reached into a drawer and took out a sewing needle, 'right, we'll try a little transfiguration, change the needle into a match.' 

Once again Willow followed the instructions carefully and looked down at the place where the needle had been, and found not one but two needles sitting together where there should have been a matchstick.

Willow looked from the needles to her confused instructor, 'well,' she said, her frustration coming through in her voice, 'at least they match.' She paused briefly, thinking about what she had said and groaned, she had created a matched pair, instead of a matchstick.

Apparently the same thought had crossed the Professor's mind, 'I suppose you'll have to try to be a little more specific but this is extremely strange, it's never happened before, that spell shouldn't even be able to do that.'

'Maybe I'm not using the spell, I've been able to do smaller magic without incantations for a while now and perhaps the wand is just focussing that, and twisting my intentions just for fun. I never thought a dragon's tooth would have an evil sense of humor.'

The lesson continued on for about an hour through trial and error, establishing that for the small things at least, she didn't need the spell words or gestures and after various mishaps Willow became better at defining her intentions to get the right results.

As the spells became consistently accurate Professor McGonagle decided to try something bigger, much bigger, as a test of the young teachers powers.

'You have told me you can watch magical power fluctuations, do you think you could duplicate something if I showed you?' Willow nodded, eager for a new challenge.

She used her magical senses to watch as the woman in front of her suddenly became a cat.

'Oh that was cool,' she said in awe as the woman returned to her normal shape. 'How does it work, I mean I saw the magic and all, but how do you approach it?'

'It is the animagus transformation, normally it requires, months or years of preparation and study to learn and not all wizards are capable of it. Each individual has an animal which expresses their personality best and they may eventually take its form at will.'

'So basically you are yourself but different, I think I can try that.' Willow closed her eyes concentrating mostly on remaining herself throughout the process, she didn't want her wand to actually give her an animal brain and things.

'Well dear, you changed your outfit, although you might want to change back before you leave,' the older witch looked over the new clothes with distaste. 'Don't worry, it is one of the most complex thing in the wizarding world, I don't think anyone has ever been successful first time and you really must see that outfit, there is a mirror in the corner.'

She looked down at herself as she moved to the mirror, recognizing the binding leather top and pants immediately. She looked in the mirror and all she saw was the wall behind her, she had no reflection.

'Um, Minerva, I'm a vampire.' The woman's' face paled as she moved behind Willow and saw only herself in the mirror.

'Oh dear.'

End Part 9

Dragonmage


	10. Do your worst

Ok, so I think I'm going to have to put up the rating because this part is a little violent but I thought it was necessary since Willow seemed to be acting so good an nice all the time when she was supposed to be a little bad sometimes.

I also rushed this chapter a bit because I have a lot of other things that I should be doing instead, so sorry if there are any glaring errors.

Part 10

'Em, Minerva, I don't suppose I could ask you not to tell anyone about this?' Willow gave the transfiguration teacher her best pleading look. 'I think this may come in useful if we can just keep it a secret.' Willow quickly used her wand to change back to her regular, alive, self, although the feel of the binding leather corset and pants had not been quite so bad this time, in fact she could really grow to like it.  


The Professor looked thoughtful, 'I shall have to tell the headmaster of course, but other than that it can be kept secret. This is rather unusual, I don't suppose that after the need for secrecy has passed that you would allow me to complete a paper on this, and also on your rather unusual wand and it's peculiar habits.'  
  
'Well I don't see why not, once I'm finished with Voldemort I don't suppose there is much point in hiding my abilities.' Willow agreed instantly, relieved that there would be no problem with the plans that were beginning to form in her overactive mind.  
  
'And speaking of secrets my dear,' the Professor began ominously, 'I think it's about time we were told exactly what happened in Hogsmeade. You need not be worried about persecution while you are within these walls, we really do not doubt the essential goodness of your intentions.'   
  
The final statement that was meant as a reassurance merely made Willow feel a little guilty since she herself was not convinced of the essential goodness of her intentions. Her personal goals and the goals of those she was working with just happened to coincide at the present time, who knew when that would change. The days when she would do anything for anyone were long gone, and while she was in no way evil, she was not above using destruction and mayhem to achieve her objectives.   
  
'Well the abbreviated version, you know, the one without all the emotional baggage, is that Voldemort has this complicated shield thing that means that any magical attack on him will fail to hurt him. He gave me a quick run down on how it worked, which kind of upset me, since it uses the tortured souls of his victims. I wasn't really thinking all that clearly and I came up with this brilliant idea that if I couldn't hurt him in a direct attack of magic, I might be able to kill him with something physical. Hence the fire, you know it might have worked but he escaped through the window and I was a little emotionally unstable so I kinda poured too much of my magical resources into the flames and blacked out. I think that's about the time when Spike rushed in and saved me. Goddess I really hate being helpless.' The explanation came out as a high-speed babble and it took a couple of minutes for Minerva to digest the information.  
  
'A soul shield? Well that complicates things, the spells and ritual behind such things was thought to be lost, I think there is some information on them in the restricted section of the library, I think a large amount of research is required, although I doubt that we will find anything substantial. Unfortunately I think that Voldemort,' she stumbled over saying his actual name, 'may be in possession of the only remaining copy, and without the actual wording of the spell it will be impossible to find its limitations or a way to break it.'  
  
'Well my research skills may be a little rusty, but I'm pretty sure the art of digging information from musty old books, is something you never forget. If we are finished her for the moment perhaps I could start making some headway.' Without waiting for an answer willow walked quickly out of the class room towards the library intent on finding the information to destroy her father.  
  
  
  
  
  
'Damn it!' The force of her anger and frustration caused her magic to flare up and the book in front of her launched itself across the library, almost decapitating Harry, who had just walked through the door in search of his half sister.  
  
He calmly walked over to her, ignoring the sudden wind blowing through the room and the fact that Willows hair and eyes were several shades darker than normal. 'You've been camped in here for a week, it's about time you went out and blew off some steam, don't you think? You have another couple of days before school starts, I'm sure can't afford to take some time off.'  
  
Willow stared at him blankly for a minute and he was beginning to think there was something seriously wrong with her when she blinked rapidly and the magic surrounding her calmed down. 'I cant find what I need here anyway, I'm going to have to find another source of information.'  
  
'Is it dark magic you're looking for?' Harry asked since Willow had declined to tell him what exactly it was that she was researching, only allowing Spike and Professor McGonagle to help her search the library. At the moment the library was in a terrible state, with books covering every available surface, Madame Pince was going to have a fit when she returned.  
  
'The darkest.' Was the only answer Willow gave, unsure whether she should explain exactly what she was looking for. On one hand Harry really had a right to know since it was his mothers spirit that was being tortured and he might have to face Voldemort again in the near future. On the other hand, she was a coward and didn't want to see his reaction.  
  
'Knockturn Alley' Harry's voice brought her out of her thoughts.  
  
'What?' she asked, confused by the reference.  
  
'If you want to find something connected to evil stuff, you should look in Knockturn Alley, its one of the side streets that branches out from Diagon Alley, it's where you met Spike, remember.' Harry had promised himself that he would wait until Willow offered to tell him what was happening before he asked any questions so he was just trying to be helpful, hoping she would trust him eventually.

'Thanks Harry,' Willow headed for the exit, intending to pick up Spike on her way to the suggested center of dark arts. She paused in the door way, knowing that this was something she really didn't have a choice in, and remembering how she had hated it when people kept things from her, 'for her own good'. 'I'll explain what's going on when we get back, okay?'

Harry nodded mutely, a wide smile lighting up his face, making Willow feel a bit sick since she knew that it would devastate him to know that Voldemort was using his mother's soul as a shield. She pushed that thought to the side, leaving it to be dealt with later as she began her search for Spike.

'Well luv, here we are.' Spike looked around the small, dark street, hoping for some kind of light display, or small miracle to show them where to look.

'What are you standing there waiting for, divine intervention?' Since that was exactly what he had be waiting for, he didn't comment, but followed as Willow marched past him, making her way to the nearest dingy hole trying to pass itself off as a shop.

The atmosphere in the shop would have been menacing if either of them had been less confident of their power, as it was the dark and dreary interior merely made it difficult to pick out their victim, the large, greasy-looking man behind the counter.

Willow stalked up to the man, not even bothering to look around since she had no idea what she was really looking for. 'If it hurts feel free to scream,' she said with a sinister looking smile.

The man just stared at her, clearly not impressed by the redhead before him who was a fraction of his weight and height, looking particularly fragile in her jeans and low cut top.

'Um pet, I think you started in the middle, trust me I have experience in this area. You're supposed to say; tell me what I want to know or I'll gouge out your eyes and use them as Christmas decorations. Then when he refuses we move on to the screaming bit, and no offence luv but you don't seem all that intimidating at the moment.' Spike came up behind her and circled his arms around the petite redhead, grinning wildly in anticipation of playing with the shopkeeper.

'Get out, both of you, before I hex you into the deepest pits of hell.' The shopkeeper stepped towards them with his shoulders squared, evidently not amused by the couple in front of him.

'Now mate, you really need to learn to use a little more imagination when you threaten people, the pits of hell thing is getting a little old.' Spike let his demon face come forward, enjoying the brief look of fear that passed through the man's eyes.

'Tam!' the shopkeeper yelled in the direction of the back of the store, 'get out here, we've got a vampire making threats.'

Almost immediately a huge man came in and stood beside the shopkeeper, idly swinging what looked like a large baseball bat by his side. Now that he was backed by the bear-like man there was no fear in the shopkeeper, 'Now you two can leave now in one piece, or in a few minutes, in multiple pieces.'

Willow turned to Spike who was still grinning, 'are you trying to say that I'm less scary than these two idiots?' Spike did not answer so she pulled away from him, taking a step towards their adversaries.

'Have you ever killed anyone?' she asked the question, seemingly out of the blue in an innocent little voice.

'Usually just filthy muggles but I don't think I mind adding a couple of vampires to me list,' the man sneered at her.

'So you would consider yourself evil then? You don't regret your actions?' Willow smiled in anticipation of the answer.

'What's the crazy bint on about?' it was the larger one, Tam, speaking this time, 'of course we don't regret it, and we won't regret two more neither.'

'Well, I'm afraid there's no hope for you two' she dropped her shields, letting her magic flow through her, bleeding into her hair and eyes making them pure black.

A wind began howling through the store, and the two men found themselves suddenly pinned to the back wall and fixed in place with razor wire digging into the skin of their wrists and ankles. 'How about now?' Willow questioned, her voice almost drowned out by the screams of the men.

'Very intimidating luv, but see now you're not playing fair, I want a shot, I've been waiting for this longer than you, you got to torture someone just a few months ago. I want to make sure I'm not rusty.' Spike gave a very genuine smile, he couldn't believe how amazing this woman was, she could match both the demon and the man in him.

'You're right,' as Willow spoke she released the men, who collapsed to the floor clutching at their wrists in agony, desperately trying to stem the blood flow. 'I'll make it up to you.' She held out her hands to summon the items she required and passed them to Spike who took one look at them and kissed her roughly as a thank you before moving towards the victims.

'How rude of me, I forgot to introduce myself,' he spoke quietly but he had no doubt that he was heard. 'The names' William the Bloody, but most people call me Spike,' he pulled a metal railway spike from the bundle Willow had given him, 'do you think you can guess why?' He slammed the spike through the shoulder of the massive man, who had long since abandoned his bat in favor of cowering in a corner.

The torture continued for several more minutes, filling the room with pain wracked screams and moans, until Spike stopped short and moved to where Willow was standing watching him. 'You know, we never did tell them what it was we wanted to know.' 

Willow burst into a fit of giggles, which seemed incredible out of place amongst the all the blood and gore of the scene. 'Hello, guys?' she waved her hand in front of their faces and got very little response as the pain brought them close to blacking out.

'Can I get a little audience participation here please.' She muttered a few spell words to block the pain of their many injuries so they could pay attention to her. 'Now, do you feel like answering our questions, or should we just kill you?'

The first man answered in a tired, broken voice, 'whatever we know, we will tell you.'

'Good, have you ever heard of a shield that uses the souls of victims as protection?' Willow grew disappointed as she saw the man shake his head.

Her enjoyment of the situation left her as her frustration returned, 'do you know anything about Voldemort that might be useful?' She knew she was clutching at straws but it was all she had left to do.

As the man shook his head again, she turned to leave, 'Spike do you want to kill them or will I?' 

On hearing these words the man named Tam shouted out, 'Wait! We have a book, it was written by one of the Deatheaters that's in Azkaban now. It was supposed to be a kind of biography, for after the war was won, it has a lot about the Dark Lord, you can take it, if you don't kill us.'

'Get it,' was all Willow said, and the man found that he was healed well enough that he could stand. 

Very slowly he inched past Spike and went to one of the shelves of books, hidden in the shadows. Willow couldn't see exactly where he took the book from but he returned with a small, leather bound book, which he passed to the vampire now blocking his path.

'It's in a code, I don't know what it is.' He explained this as he moved as far from them as possible in the cramped space of the store.

Willow took the book from Spike, suddenly feeling tired of the whole thing, 'Do what you want with them Spike, I'll see you outside.' With that said she turned and left the store leaving her soulless vampire lover to do what he wanted, knowing that those two deserved whatever they got.

End part 10 


	11. pain, gult and a little happiness

This is not mine, the character belong to various other people and I just find great enjoyment in ruining their fictional lives.  
  
Anyway her is the next part which, after weeks of not being able to write anything, just seemed to sort of appear on its own today. It's a bit shorter than usual, but it seemed to come to a natural conclusion, so here it is.  
  
Part eleven  
  
'Hey Red, what are you doing in there?' Spike had been sitting in the living area of their rooms for the past five minutes listening to the constant flow of noise coming from Willow's room. It was too quiet for even his vamp hearing to make any sense of but it was enough to pique his curiosity.  
  
He waited for an answer, finally getting up and moving towards the door to her room, knocking gently, 'open the door luv.'  
  
Again he got no answer and finally he just pushed at the door, surprised to find it locked. He pressed his ear against the smooth wood door and listened intently, realising that the red head was talking but unable to sort out the words. He stood for a moment wondering whether to just leave her to finish whatever she was up to or force the door.  
  
The decision was made when a strong smell of blood filled the room, originating from behind the door he was standing at. Within seconds he was in the room, the door a splintered mess of wood behind him.  
  
Instantly he saw Willow curled up on the bed bleeding freely from her wrists and ankles, thinking quickly he grabbed pillows beside her and began tearing their covers, forming makeshift bandages which he wrapped tightly around the open wounds to stem the blood flow.  
  
He closed his hands around the bandages on her wrists, trying to add to the pressure, unsure whether he should get help. 'Come on luv, you need to heal yourself,' he got no response and as worried as he was about her, the scent of her blood was driving him crazy.  
  
'Spike?' her eyelids fluttered open and she stared up, with glazed eyes at the vampire cradling her.  
  
'You have to heal yourself luv, I cant leave long enough to get anyone else to do it for you. Do it for me, please, I don't want to lose you, it would hurt too much.' His final words seemed to have an effect and he reluctantly allowed her to pull her hand away from him so she could heal the opposite wrist and her other wounds.  
  
'I can't hurt you too, I've caused too much pain.' She spoke softly as the last cut closed and all the energy seemed to drain out of her leaving her collapsed back against Spike crying silently into his chest.  
  
If anyone had walked in at that moment they would have been shocked at the scene in front of them, as the two lovers lay in a mess of blood and destroyed pillows.  
  
After an hour of simply holding her, Spike gently scooped the bloody redhead into his arms and carried her through to the bathroom to get them both cleaned up.  
  
The advantage of baths in the wizarding community is that as well as them being of epic proportions, they fill almost instantaneously and it took very little time for Spike to lift her in and begin to sponge off the dried blood. 'What did you do to yourself?' He muttered quietly as he washed her matted hair.  
  
'I had to feel their pain.' Her voice was quiet, almost inaudible as though she was talking to herself more than to him.  
  
'Who's pain?' to say he was confused would be putting it mildly, but as much as he wanted to force the answers from her, he simply continued to clean her gently, hoping to sooth the pain of whatever was torturing her.  
  
'The men, in the shop. What I did to them, they were human, it doesn't matter what they did in the past I had no right, no right.' Her voice had risen growing louder as she grew angry with herself, but tailed off as tears once again flowed down her cheeks.  
  
'Why are you talking in the past tense pet, they're not dead.' Spike was surprised as her head swung round violently and Willow stared directly into his eyes, as though trying to judge the truth of his words.  
  
'But...' she paused, obviously trying to collect her thoughts before starting again, 'but you killed them, I tortured them and left you to kill them.' She shook with the force of her emotions, her mind running in overdrive, attempting to process this new information.  
  
'But I didn't, the magic twisted you, not that I'm complaining, you were bloody wonderful,' seeing that his choice of words weren't exactly helping, he quickly moved on, 'but it wasn't the real you, and I had a feeling you might regret those actions. So I left them, you know, alive. If you decode the book you will save hundreds of lives, including Harry, it will be worth it.' He felt the girl relax slightly and he paused a moment before adding, 'And don't you dare tell anyone about this, they'll think I've gone soft.' The small smile she directed at him was enough to make his day and left him wondering just when exactly he had become so pathetically sappy.  
  
Harry had once again found Willow camped out in the library. She had been there for days, pouring over a tatty, leather bound book, making amazing piles of notes, which were now completely covering the surfaces of three large tables. Spike would appear at regular intervals and drag her away from whatever it was she was doing to get some rest or food, or anything he could really convince her to do before she insisted on returning.  
  
After failing to get an answer from Willow, Harry had tried to get the blonde vampire to tell him something, but all he had got was a muttered comment about redemption and 'making it worth the pain' which pretty much left him more confused than before.  
  
He was getting seriously worried, his sister had been in the same research obsessed state of mind for over a week and as he wandered along a corridor towards the library, he was considering asking Dumbledore to step in. He was so deep in thought than when he reached the library it took him a moment to register the sight before him.  
  
Willow was standing on the table doing some kind of dance, an enormous smile plastered on her face as Harry simple stood and stared in shock.  
  
Seconds latter, the ecstatic redhead spotted him and leaped of the table and ran towards him, throwing her arms around him and spinning him round in a circle. 'I got it, I finally got it!' She sang the words and pulled away from him, continuing the dance he had seen before.  
  
'W-w-what did you get?' Harry stuttered as he finally overcame his disbelief and found his voice.  
  
'The book, I finally got it to decode itself, it's always blood, I need to go find Spike.' On that cryptic note she skipped off down the corridor, presumable in search of Spike, leaving Harry behind, alone, with the source of this entire mystery directly in front of him. If Willow had been thinking clearly, she would have known better.  
  
Harry quickly strode over to the multiple tables where Willow had been working and picked up the small book that seemed to be the cause of her recent mood swings.  
  
He opened it to the first page and read the title, having to spend a moment deciphering the handwritten black scrawl, 'The biography of the greatest man of our time.' Not exactly a catchy title, but after the hype, he had to give it a chance.  
  
Moments later he was reading eagerly, devouring page after page about his arch nemesis, his life, his climb to power, his original plans, his talents. He was finally beginning to appreciate the true worth and power of this book, somewhere within its pages was the information they needed to destroy the dark Lord, he just knew it instinctively. This book was the key.  
  
He turned another page, reading the title with interest, 'The Soul Shield', he had no idea what that was, but it sounded interesting, so he read down the page, as he reached the end, the implications of the shield began to sink in and the book fell from his hands, crashing to the floor. Voldemort was using his their souls, his parents were in a place of perpetual torment.  
  
Spike stood still, an amused smile on his face as Willow bounced around him. It had taken him a few minutes to pick out the cause of her happiness from the excited babble, but now that he had he was genuinely pleased.  
  
She had been so tortured with guilt over those worthless pieces of wizard @#%$. She had become obsessed with decoding the book they had given her, needing to try to justify the pain she had inflicted. Now that she had figured it out it was as though all her problems had been solved. Intellectually both he and she knew it wouldn't last, the real world would come crashing in sometime soon and ruin the party, but for now they were happy.  
  
On the other side of the castle Harry crouched in a corner, his head buried in his knees and his body shaking from the force of his misery.  
  
He didn't know how long he had been there but finally he felt as though he had run out of tears and his misery became overshadowed by anger and hate. Willow hadn't managed to kill Voldemort, but he would, nothing would stop him.  
  
A/N ok so I came to the conclusion that Willow was getting way too dark, so I thought I'd write a happy little interlude, but unfortunately I couldn't seem to write this chapter without there being a lot of pain and agony. Sorry.  
  
Dragonmage. 


End file.
